Living in Cambridge, I have become accustomed to seeing my hometown transformed into a film set.
Within the last year alone we have played host to the cast and crew of The Theory of Everything, The Man Who Knew Infinity and ITV’s latest drama series, Grantchester. Filming of Grantchester began in March, when vintage cars and buses appeared on the iconic King’s Parade.
Residents of the nearby village of Grantchester were initially a little apprehensive. It seems that they were won over: many of them agreed to appear as extras and, at the end of September, over 200 of them crammed into the local village hall for a preview of the first episode.
Cleudo with cassocks
The six-part series is based on the novels of James Runcie, a local author and the son of Robert Runcie, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Runcie’s series is entitled The Grantchester Mysteries. He says: ‘It was going to be [set in a] made-up village [but] then I thought, it’s got to be real, Grantchester, a moral commentary on Englishness’. As the stories now make their way to primetime television, what will the English viewers make of their ‘moral commentary’?
Set in the 1950s, the series focuses on Sidney Chambers, played by Cambridge alumnus James Norton. Sidney is a charming and attractive vicar who cannot resist a whiff of intrigue. He first finds himself playing detective when one of his parishioners is discovered dead at his desk. Teaming up with local police inspector Geordie Keating, he combines his brains with his intuition in order to solve the murder. However, it’s his unique ability to get people talking that makes him a valuable ally for Keating in solving further cases. The Telegraph rather wonderfully referred to the whole thing as ‘Cluedo with cassocks’.
Erasing the past
Sidney is a very unconventional clergyman. He loves whisky, jazz music and beautiful women. He is also haunted by memories of his time in the military. At the conclusion of the first episode he declares: ‘We cannot erase our pasts, however hard we try. Instead we must carry them with us into the future’. For him, it seems that moving on involves attempting to right the past by finding a way to address the violence in his own community.
Runcie has said the character is loosely based on his father: ‘I didn’t intend [Sidney] to be a fictionalised, alternative biography of my father […] but one cannot easily escape a strong paternal influence’. If Sidney does resemble Robert, it is because of his inner moral compass: ‘hating the sin, loving the sinner, believing in forgiveness, tolerance, faith, moral purpose. The key thing is compassion’.
Sidney certainly feels compassion for his flock and is deeply concerned about the details of their lives. He asks: ‘As a priest, isn’t everything our business? There’s no part of the human heart which is not our responsibility’. People in turn are happy to share their secrets with him.
This is often what makes vicars interesting and useful characters in crime fiction: people are willing to confess to them in confidence things that might otherwise go unspoken. Sidney also has a great ability to listen and to really understand what people are telling him. As a sleuth, however, he must decide whether or not to reveal their secrets. Throughout the series, Sidney sometimes betrays confidences, just as he steals, lies and more. As the series progresses, his actions begin to flagrantly disregard the teaching of the Bible. It is made obvious to viewers, whatever their religious persuasion, that Sidney is far from flawless, yet both Runcie and the show’s screenwriter Daisy Coulam depict him with affection.
Someone to listen
Often, when fictional vicars appear on TV, the emphasis is on the comedic elements of their lives: think Rev, Father Ted or The Vicar of Dibley. In Grantchester we see something of the real struggles that a man like Sidney might face. By bringing him so close to matters of life and death, sin and forgiveness, good and bad, Runcie really does ask us to engage with a moral commentary on life in an English community and the role of the church within it.
Whatever his failings, Sidney’s most important characteristic is that people trust him. They know that he will listen to them and try to help them if he can. Perhaps, as Christians, we might ask ourselves whether our communities still view the church as a place where they can find someone to listen to them, someone they can trust, and someone who will offer them compassion and acceptance. Either way we, along with Sidney, need to take responsibility for the state of the human hearts around us and for helping them to find peace and restoration both in this life and the next.
