‘Grantchester’ Recap: Alphy Breaks Down After Family History Revealed

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Grantchester Season 10 Episode 6.]

The past is haunting Reverend Alphy Kottaram (Rishi Nair) in Grantchester, or rather it’s what he wasn’t told about the past that’s doing the haunting. The vicar struggled with whether or not to open a letter that his mother left when she put him up for adoption throughout Grantchester Season 10 Episode 6, which aired on Sunday, July 20, on PBS. The letter was kept from him all these years, and its sudden arrival threw him for a loop. His birthday made the subject even more poignant.

Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green) planned a surprise party for the vicar who doesn’t celebrate his birthday, bringing the whole Grantchester gang in for a party that took a dark turn when the pub band’s frontman wound up dead. Meg (Christie Russell-Brown) was at the party as well, but things were quite awkward between her and Alphy after an uncomfortable stretch of time had passed since he contacted her. The discovery of new information from his orphaned childhood has thrown Alphy off his axis, and he doesn’t know how to work through it, resulting in him reverting back into his emotionally closed-off dating habits.

Alphy told Geordie that Meg made him “nervous,” but the DI urged his friend to work through the nerves and connect with her at the party regardless. After some weird small talk, Alphy asked her out again, but Meg said she thought Alphy had lost interest. He said it was due to him being spooked by her father being Bishop Grey (Stuart Bowman), but it’s clear that there was more going on under the surface than Alphy was letting on. And he would get continuous reminders of his struggles throughout the episode until his mother’s letter would become impossible to ignore.

Love was flowing much more easily between Miss Scott (Melissa Johns) and Larry (Bradley Hall), whom Alphy married in a small ceremony. After the wedding, Larry told a story about the power of a mother’s love that helped Alphy crack the case about the unsolved murder. A pregnant woman killed the father of her baby (the lead singer of the band), who said she was ruining his life with a “bastard child.” He got physical with her, and her anger made her strike a fatal blow with a heavy ashtray to protect herself and her child.

“When my child is old enough, will you make sure that they know I did it for them?” the mother cried in the interrogation room to Alphy and Geordie as she faced prison. “And will you tell them that I love them so very, very much, and we’ll see each other again one day?”

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The emotional weight of it all made Alphy forget about his dinner date with Meg, making him inadvertently stand her up at the restaurant. She arrived at his home to tell him that they need to take a break. “Your heart may be in it, but your head’s not there,” she told him. “Whatever it is that you’re going through right now, it’s getting in the way of us…You’ll work it out. You don’t strike me as the kind of person who lets things hold you back, Alphy.”

It was exactly what he needed to hear (and another sign that these two are a good match). Alphy asked Geordie to help him read the letter from his mother over a drink. “I owe it to myself, and to everybody I care about, to open this letter,” he said. He feared it would say that she didn’t want him, “but I’m prepared for that,” he said. “I’ve had it in the back of my mind for years.”

“You can do this,” Geordie said, and then Alphy asked him to read the letter aloud. Alphy’s worst fears didn’t come true. The letter said proved as much in its very first words.

“My dearest, never question if you were loved,” the letter said. “Make no mistake, you are a blessing, and you deserve to live a full and happy life. Forgive me, but I simply cannot give you that. I have nothing and nobody. Even though we will no longer be together, I will think of you every day until I die. I know you will make the world a better place simply be being in it. May your life shine bright, my son.”

Alphy heard exactly what he needed to hear his whole life, and he broke down crying hearing his mother’s words. Something healed in him in that scene, and Leonard (Al Weaver) is searching for a similar kind of healing in his own life.

The episode ended with Leonard begging his lover, Daniel (Oliver Dimsdale), to acknowledge the seriousness of their secret relationship. After his tumultuous prison stint, Leonard tearfully admitted to his alcoholism and revealed that his father banned him from his funeral to Daniel. Leonard doesn’t have a happy family life, but Daniel does because he’s still not out. Leonard wept over the idea that there’s “another person in [his] life who is utterly ashamed” of him. What Leonard wanted was acknowledgement of the great sacrifice and bravery it has taken for him to come out to his family and be alone in that battle. Daniel assured he wasn’t ashamed of him and agreed that he would stand by him moving forward.

The emotional floodgates are open in Grantchester. How will this continue in the rest of Season 10 and Season 11, the final season?

Grantchester, Sundays, 9/8c, PBS