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Grantchester

This week’s Grantchester finds our dear, darling, dishy vicar in a bad space. After pumping the breaks on his romance with Amanda (Morven Christie) last week, Sidney Chambers (James Norton) is dealing with the raw anguish of self-inflicted heartbreak. And he’s dealing with it in the exact same way I do: running a lot and drinking way more.

But before we get into this week’s mystery or Margaret’s pregnancy scare or how Sidney was a total prick to his best friends, we need to talk about Leonard (Al Weaver) because HOLY CRAP. Leonard actually did it! He actually proposed to Hilary.

If you’ll recall, Leonard and Hilary’s relationship started exactly two episodes ago after Leonard got a stern warning from the homophobic Archdeacon. While Sidney’s been happy to accept Leonard’s sexuality, the rest of the Anglican Church isn’t. Being gay isn’t just a sin in 1950s England, but a crime. So we’ve watched Leonard awkwardly try to woo Hilary in an attempt to conform. The two happen to be, as Anne Shirley would swoon, “kindred spirits,” so there’s that, but Leonard’s also presenting his platonic love as romantic love. It’s a lie. It’s a convenient lie designed to make life seem sweeter, but it’s still a lie. A drunken Sidney brutally calls Leonard out for it, but sweet Mr. Finch isn’t having it this time.

Leonard Finch is feeling himself, you guys, and that’s probably in huge part because he got to play the hero in this episode. Grantchester opened this week with a hold up in a post office. Leonard finds some kernel of courage within himself and comes to the defense of both Hilary and Wendy, the postal worker with a “weak heart.” Later, Leonard links the thief to a mean old ex-con. The twist? When Geordie and the cops arrive at this guy’s garage, he’s been shot dead. The plot thickens when another post office is held up by not one, but two assailants — and one’s a girl. Geordie thinks the man’s pious (and very admittedly guilt-ridden) widow and their handsome charge are the suspects.

Because this is Grantchester and Grantchester likes to toy with our moral compasses, we get a series of thought-provoking twists! Don’t you just love a thought-provoking twist? They’re so much juicier than cheap and tawdry ones! First, the guilt-ridden widow wasn’t praying to holy Jesus and the Virgin Mary for redemption because she had killed her husband. Nor was she shtupping the younger hot guy hanging around. She was reeling from the guilt of having an abortion. See, she didn’t want to have a child with her super-abuser of a husband, so she made the choice to finish the pregnancy. Her pretty boy best friend was just there for moral support. The devoutly Catholic woman asks Sidney if she’ll be forgiven for the sin, even though she admits she doesn’t regret it one bit.

What the woman does regret is standing by and letting her husband divert his cruel gaze to his shy secretary, Martha. The second twist is that Martha shot and killed her boss in self-defense. The implication is she was being raped almost every night by him and she finally had enough. The third twist? She and “weak-hearted” Wendy were the post office bandits. It was all Wendy’s idea. The two of them had been friends since their school days and hatched a plan to run away together to Paris. Grantchester doesn’t make it clear if they were in love or not, but Grantchester also gives us multiple portraits of people stuck living their lives behind carefully constructed masks.

Which brings us back to our sad, besotted vicar. Sidney is not coping with his single status very well. He’s angry running in the fields, drinking too much in public, and treating his best friends awfully. Sidney practically erupts after he catches a tender moment between Guy and Amanda. He’s not aware that they are attempting “conscious uncoupling.” To him, it’s just a picture perfect family that he can never be apart of.

Sidney also is upset when he learns that Geordie (Robson Green) is still seeing Margaret. Geordie’s only defense: “I don’t have your God. I don’t have your strength.” The irony is Sidney doesn’t have Sidney’s strength. He’s always teetered on the edge of depression and without Amanda he collapses further and further inwards into the worst corners of himself. Finally, he snaps.

At the end of the episode, Sidney hurries to Amanda’s house, barges in, and kisses her passionately. She shoves him back and then brings him back into her arms. The episode ends with them making hot, burning, backache-inducing love on the staircase.

So Sidney has made Amanda an adulterer. The irony is Guy has nobly offered to take the fall in a staged adultery pic so she doesn’t have to. I’m going to guess that this little encounter is going to blow up in Amanda’s face.