As a genre, the cozy murder mystery avoids graphic violence in favor of something less grisly despite the crime at hand: The careful piecing together of a puzzle. A subgenre particular to England somehow involves the clergy in all this sleuthing. “Grantchester” (on PBS Masterpiece) pairs a vicar and a police detective, and like the similarly-themed UK imports “Father Brown” and “Sister Boniface,” these shows are all set in the mid-20th century.
Why? Beats me. Now in its ninth season, “Grantchester” boasts a new vicar. This is very good news.
The show had become steadily tedious in recent years. But with Rishi Nair as Alfie, the new man in the collar beginning with Episode 3, suddenly there is wit and life in this series (renewed for another season earlier this week). Alfie is self-possessed and watchful, but also dashing; Nair holds the screen with real charisma.
Within 10 minutes of his first appearance, he’s taking his shirt off and I confessed I laughed. The church may be one of the main settings, but the role has consistently been cast with an eye towards sex appeal. Nair brings a certain style and panache that was otherwise missing with Tom Brittney as the previous vicar, named Will, who had become a self-pitying bore (ditto for the vicar he replaced, played by James Norton).
So here we are on vicar No. 3 and the show is self-aware enough to poke fun at the idea that every vicar would want to solve crimes with the warmly gruff police detective Geordie K.
