This shows been going on for a long time – 10 seasons.
There’s always pretty much exactly one body in each episode, usually turns up in the first half and gets sorted in the last few minutes. There’s always at least one. It’s a rule. Some weeks somebody else gets it and we have two bodies.
The inspector is always the same guy, with the same wife and rambunctious kids who grow and multiply before our eyes over the years!
The other main character is the parish priest of the local Anglican church. The interplay of him and the Inspector is the bedrock of the show. There have been three of these vicars over the course of the show.:
- First was a handsome, manly red-headed fellow.
He left the clergy to marry an also handsome east asian lady after a couple of seasons - He was replaced by a handsome, manly curly-haired fellow.
I do not have the episodes when the first guy left, so I’m a little in the dark on how that happened. - Most recently we have a handsome, manly Asian fellow – I guessed Pakistani because there’s more of them in Britain, but the show eventually told me he is Indian.
- The other constant is Mrs MacGuire, who is the housekeeper at the parsonage. She has been there forever – opinionated old tyrant with a heart of gold – the usual casting 🙂 She marries this nice old fellow in the middle seasons somewhere and becomes “Mrs C” instead of Mrs MacGuire!
- Then there’s Leonard who starts out as the assistant chaplin. He provides comic relief by giving the sermons and tried to be “assistant detective” when they are between manly dudes. He’s also very, very gay, and part of the drama is that he eventually loses his cushy gig living off the church at Mrs C’s house if the when some nasty little fellow rats him out to the church.
- My reviews here are spotty, because I am at the mercy of whatever season of the show each of my three PBS stations decides to broadcast on any given Sunday night.
For being such a placid, rural England kind of show, I give them credit for going right at the dysfunctional mores of the age. (See 50’s tags below!)
The inspectors wife Cathy (who I freeze the picture for every time she’s on just to admire her!) has been nearly molested by her supervisor at the department store. She told the owner, and the owner basically told her to shake it off and (literally) get fucked, he didn’t want to lose the dude because of her complaining.
That makes my blood boil all these years later just writing about it!
The show is set in Cambridgeshire (the shire around Cambridge) in the 50’s. The customs and mores of the suburban and countryside English in the 50’s are endlessly fascinating to me, as I natter on about below.
The regular folk live in dingy brick row houses with the front door and front rooms are four steps from the sidewalk. The upper-class folk live in impressive houses set 40′ back from the driveway in the countryside that photograph very well in long views. They all can afford super spiffy drawing rooms, but the outside looks really un-maintained. They all have a wait-staff of at least 4-5 people.
- a maid for the lady
- a manservant(?) for the guy
- a cook/cleaner
- a gardener
I see a metaphor coming on!
Also, they are not traipsing around just any country shire, they are in a University town. So when they are in town at the police station or whatever, we get living shots of those very photogenic University buildings … and an endless supply of quirky characters for 10 seasons worth of murders! 🙂
Tags
I keep adding tags to theWordpress for these posts:
- 50’s – seems harmless enough, but really, a lot, maybe most of the drama is generated by 50’s thinking.
- From the very first time Leonard flutters his hands male gay-ness is right there. Leonard loses his job with the Church and is even sent to jail for a few months.
- In the later seasons, woman’s autonomy pops up a lot. Cathy works at a department store. The boss is an asshole.
The oldest daughter Esme (Season 9) moves out and starts work at an insurance company. Surprise, her boss is an asshole also! - There
- s even WW2 stuff. Geordie’s best mate from prison in Burma visits and disruptes he life pretty badly. Mrs C’s new hubby has unexplained wealth from his time overseas.
Season 1
- S1 E1 Sydney and Amanda have a lot of sparks!
- S1 E2 Upper class racism
- S1 E3 Euthanasia
- S1 E4 Sodomites. Hildegard appears. Geordie’s kid has whooping cough
- S1 E5 Revenge murder in the Jazz club
- S1 E6 Dirty laundry from WW2. Geordie is shot. Sydney’s on his own.
Things I love about Season 1.
- Sydney starts out so awesome as the first vicar.
The flashbacks to his time in WW2 in Germany are useful but tedious to me. - Sydney doesn’t have a car, so a few minutes of eash episode is devoted to him barrelling down country lanes on his 3-speed English racer bicycle!
- Mrs Chapman will always be there to pour tea by the window.
- Leonard joins the crew in the second or third episode.
- Amanda … oh Amanda (heart,heart) … they are totally into each other, but he’s married to the church.
The best scenes in each episode are where I can stare at her exquisite self. - Hildegarde was perhaps even more beautiful, but it was never gonna happen.
- The racism is there but pretty muted among the classy folk.
- The anti-gay however is right out front, nobody is the least bit shy about slurring gay folks.
- The very end of the last episode gave us a bit of spousal abuse also.
Season 2
- S2 E1 Child abuse. Teen pregnancy in the 50’s. No paternity test yet!
- S2 E2 Cold War intrigue, Soviet spies at Cambridge! Margaret appears.
- S2 E3 Spousal abuse. Sydney is kind of a selfish asshole. Amanda’s back.
- S2 E4 Antisemitism
- S2 E5 Damn, this one was rough. They executed the poor kid from E1.
- S2 E6 Another round of child abuse, the Archdeacon gets in trouble!
Things about Season 2.
- Smoking in the restaurants, and EVEN smoking in the hospital rooms!
- Margaret appears! Margaret is the best!
Some truly noble women are the heart of this show.
Sydney lets them down every time. What a waste.
Season 1 worked over 50’s attitudes on blacks and gays.
Season 2 reminds is that in the 50’s it pretty much sucked to be a woman also.
Season 3
- S3 E1 Nursing Home abuse. Amanda has ditched the crabby husband, had the baby.
- S3 E2 Race prejudice on the cricket green! Secret Masonic handshakes!
- S3 E3 Robbing the Post Office! Margaret is such a babe, Sydney is a loser.
- S3 E4 A girl falls out of a steeple and dies. Mrs MacGuire hubby re-appears … and steals her life savings!
- S3 E5 Sydney follows the stealing hubby to a gypsy camp! Hubby is murdered. Geordie is kicked out of the house.
- S3 E6 Cathy lets Geordie come home, Leonard and Daniel get it on, but Sydney messes it up with Amanda.
Amanda and Sydney are together all the time, but no hanky-panky (until E4!) – a vicar and a divorced woman! Geordie and Margaret on the other hand can never be seen together, but appear to be rutting like wild animals every chance they get.
A lot of emotionally difficult stuff this season. Geordie and Margaret (and his wife) are all in pain. Amanda and Sydney are in a lot of pain. Leonard and that sweet girl who wants to marry him are in pain. I feel so bad for all of them.
Also Masonic hanky-panky play a large part this season. Secret handshakes, favoritism to the boys on the inside. The Masonic insider stuff really upsets me for some reason. A Mason on Geordie team rats him out to his wife, which made me want to reach into the TV and throttle the guy.
I love the old buildings on hard times. The nursing home in E1 looks very noble in it’s English countryside setting, but in detail you can see it’s falling apart.
Overall I did not like Season 3. All that guilt and duty stuff wore me out. Hope S4 is better.
I’ve had enough of this vicar (the first one, but the second one is almost as bad).
He’s such a self-obsessed fuck. A really attractive self-obsessed fuck according to how the writers portray him, because all these really excellent, high-quality, very fine women keep falling for him and he keeps leading them on and makes out with them for a half-episode before deciding YET AGAIN that he’s really married to the church … Every season has at least one of these poor suckers, and I’m over it.