I’ve watched PBS’s MASTERPIECE MYSTERY! for as long as I can remember. When I was young, I used to sneak it on the black and white television in our family’s sunroom while everyone else watched ALF on the color television in the living room. As a result, I fell in love with Edward Gorey and British mysteries. Needless to say, MASTERPIECE MYSTERY! has been my favorite show for almost forty years. (I know, I’m aging myself.)
Sunday night, I watched the first episode of season five of GRANTCHESTER. Though it’s not my favorite of the Mystery! series, I do really enjoy watching it. A big bonus is that it stars Robson Green, who IMHO is one of the top actors in the British Mystery television circuit.
Overall, the episode’s recipe was good with its usual humor intermixed with melancholy with a healthy dash of religion, boxing, and social issues, and a tablespoon of the complex interaction of Town and Gown. A good portion of the show involved the scruffy detective (Green) showing the ropes to the new vicar (Tom Brittney) as he assisted on the murder investigation. The female reporter served as both an annoyance and possible love interest for the duo. I’m giving the show some leeway as they develop Brittney’s character.
The thing bothered me about this episode, and the purpose of this blog, was that it “borrowed” its underlying theme from Dorothy L. Sayer’s GAUDY NIGHT (one of THE best mystery novels of all time), applying it to Cambridge instead of Oxford, advancing it three decades, and adding sex and violence to “modernize” it. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, Sayers is a formidable match and GRANTCHESTER did her no justice.
Both GAUDY NIGHT and GRANTCHESTER addressed the tough decisions that women have to make, and still do today, whether to prioritize their professional or domestic goals. The female characters, who were very educated and had promising careers ahead of them (they were going to Oxford and Cambridge, respectively, representing a tiny minority of women at that time), knew that they would soon get married and be expected to abandon their promising futures to have children.
It’s still an issue today, despite women being successful in both the office and at home. Sheryl Sandberg’s LEAN IN resonates so much because it affects over 50% of the population every day.
The issue I had with GRANTCHESTER’s heavy handed take on the topic is that it added a superfluous salaciousness and nihilism. There was no middle ground, no thoughtful consideration by the female students about their future, cramming the complex debate into a sub-one-hour format. “Gather ye roses while ye may,” as Robert Herrick penned, was not sufficient for these one-dimensional women. They wanted to gather a lot of roses, which were scored according to their importance. Accurately portrayed or not, their college experiences resembled modern-day frat parties, and maybe that was the point—the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or maybe it was just so that a younger, more progressive audience would identify with them better. As in prior episodes, GRANTCHESTER continued to highlight the detective’s wife struggling with the work-life balance as way to contrast, or perhaps prove, the college students’ point.
All in all, I enjoyed the episode, though the sharp-witted ghosts of Sayers and Harriet Vane nagged me throughout. I can’t wait to see what happens during next week’s MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!. In the meantime, I’m going to get my copy of GAUDY NIGHT from the Mysterious Nook library and re-read it again.
The Mysterious Nook 