Grantchester ★★★
Saturday, 7.30pm, ABC

The traditional small-town whodunnit is a glorious mass of contradictions. A well-constructed mystery must, of course, avoid resting on coincidence. For a mystery to provide a satisfying puzzle to the audience – and obviously a big part of the appeal of the whodunnit is the quest to guess the killer before the detective does – it has to be tightly constructed and everything has to have happened for a reason, not because of random chance. In fact, a murder mystery needs to involve far less coincidence than real life does, if it’s to please the exacting armchair sleuth.

Yet, on the other hand, such stories also depend massively on coincidence. Take Grantchester, the long-running British mystery series that has just begun its ninth season on ABC. In the beginning, the serene village of Grantchester in Cambridgeshire was blessed with the arrival of the Reverend Sidney Chambers (James Norton). The vicar was young, strapping, handsome and a crime-solving genius, which was great news for most of the people of Grantchester but terrible news for its surprisingly large community of murderers.

After a few years, though, Sidney moved on, to the delight of said murderers, to be replaced by the Reverend Will Davenport (Tom Brittney). The new vicar, as it happened, was young, strapping, handsome and a crime-solving genius. “Curses!” cried the murderers, as they were frogmarched away by the redoubtable Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green), a tough old-school copper who is nevertheless flexible enough in his methods to allow the local vicar to accompany him to crime scenes and suspect interviews.

In the first couple of episodes of season nine, Reverend Will has been offered a new job in Newcastle, where he’ll get to minister to the needy but possibly solve fewer baffling murders. As he decides to take the job, the Grantchester murderers prepare to pop the corks on their champagne, and in comes the new vicar, Alphy Kottaram (Rishi Nair). Imagine everyone’s surprise when Alphy turns out to be tall, and strapping, and …

As Lady Bracknell might say, for a village to have two sexy detective vicars might be described as good fortune: to have three looks like screenwriting contrivance. And the only defence to such contrivance is, as always, “who cares?” For Grantchester is good old-fashioned merry murder hijinks: given gravitas by well-drawn characters and injections of domestic drama, but in the end predicated on Agatha Christie’s prime directive: murder should be fun!

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Some crime shows are gritty and bleak and realistic: these are usually set in big cities, where there is grime and decay and the dreadful crimes committed are simply symptoms of the world’s essential rottenness. Grantchester is the other kind: set in small towns where everything is peaceful and bucolic and murders exist so that they can be solved, thus reassuring us that everything is OK and there will always be brave and clever people in charge to sort things out. Both kinds of show have their attraction and uses, but we should definitely be grateful that the likes of Grantchester exist.

It’s not all about the mystery, of course. Grantchester would be a much lesser show without Robson Green as Geordie (so named, presumably, because he’s …a Geordie). Green locks so naturally into his well-practised easy charm as the occasionally grouchy but always golden-hearted detective. The sex appeal is ostensibly provided by the vicars in this show: Norton, then Brittney, and now Nair have provided smouldering good looks and swoonworthy sensitivity throughout. But with the regular turnover, it’s Green who’s been the heart of the show since the beginning, and it can be guaranteed that there’s a fair slab of this show’s audience who find his craggier, more mature brand of sexiness the real heart-grabber.

Grantchester’s greatest trick, though, is taking the ridiculousness of the set-up and turning it into something that can easily enter into your soul as a sweetly serious drama. As unlikely as it is that these people, surrounded constantly by death and violence, could be so relaxed and contented in their rural idyll, one takes enormous joy in the fact they are. Between the murders, there’s love and grief and the gentle beauty of people in a different place and time living lives that would be enviable, if it weren’t for all the dead bodies that keep popping up.

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