In Its Sixth Episode, 'Grantchester' Season 9 Finds Its Roman Empire
If the latest episode of Grantchester is anything to go by, that recent internet trend about men being obsessed with the Roman Empire has been true for much longer than TikTok has been around. The discovery of some Roman-era remains in local farmers Marcus and Della Blakely's (Cavan Clerkin and Laura Jane Matthewson) field sends the village into a tizzy: Archeologists from Oxford arrive on the scene, hinting at more extraordinary discoveries to come, locals are rubbernecking at the dig site, and everyone's suddenly an expert on the intricacies of life in first century Britain. Except for Jack, of course, who somehow actually is an expert on Roman-era Cambridgeshire, who has worked archeological digs in Egypt and may or may not have traded in some sketchily acquired antiquities.
Readers, when I say I have never wanted a bottle episode focused on a single character's history more in my life more than this moment...Whew. In more realistic dreams, Grantchester really should let Nick Brimble do more than play the straight man to Tessa Peake-Jones; he steals this episode out from under literally everyone. For a long while, it almost looks like the murder-of-the-week will be little more than a history lesson. This would have been fun in an on-the-nose way: there's a dead body but no real case to solve. Instead, everything's thrown into chaos when Professor Henry Waddingham (George Asprey), the lead archeologist, turns up dead after a talk (complete with a blatant plea for money) at the Village Hall.
In theory, this mystery should be more interesting than it is. The trio of characters at its center — Waddingham, an archeologist turned black market dealer; Billy Randall (Curtis Kemlo), his hero-worshipping sidekick with daddy issues; and Kate Farnshaw (Natali Servat), a former curator of the Ashmolean Museum who got fired for stealing artifacts — should be fascinating, the type of figures we rarely get to see on this show. Instead, their interpersonal tangle of lies and artifice feels forced and uninteresting.
