‘Grantchester’ Stages a Murder on the Cambridge Express
Alphy finally makes an active choice in his life and winds up finding a murderer.
This week’s Grantchester is a rare bird, one where Geordie and Alphy spend the entire episode apart, solving two different cases. There have been times when Geordie has taken a back seat in the investigations: Sidney quit the vicarage in Season 3 and stumbled on a case, but Geordie showed up before it was solved; Season 8 put Geordie on desk duty – but Larry and Jennifer stepped up, not Will. The vicars were never left to solve murders on their own; the murders were the reason Geordie showed up.
However, unlike Sidney or Will, Alphy’s choices have not been active ones. When he arrived in Season 9, Alphy didn’t like cops or the British justice system, and yet somehow, by the end of it, he’s partnering with Geordie. As Lacy noted at the time, the show needed him to. But it’s not a choice he made; it’s one that he let happen because everyone else in Grantchester treated it as the default. Same thing with his mother’s arrival – Alphy didn’t seek her out; Geordie found her. One could argue it’s why he’s a vicar in the first place: his mother left him at a church, so he stayed.
If this weren’t the show’s final season, this episode might feel long overdue – removing Alphy from the relative safety of the norm and forcing him to own his choices. However, because it is the final season, it lands more awkwardly than it probably should. Moreover, the two cases aren’t really equal. As cute as Raymond Hayes is, his petty larcency is more “flimsy excuse for everyone to have feelings about parenthood” than an interesting case, leaving the episode to flounder when it’s not on the train.
