‘Grantchester’ Season 4 Sees Sidney ‘Reinvigorate His Faith’

Think life in the 1950s was simpler, do you? Then you haven’t spent much time in Grantchester.

Besides a high number of homicides, this English village has nonconformist Anglican vicars, a hardheaded police detective and a gay curate among its compelling characters. In Season 4 of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery! import, there’s also a major cast change.

Rev. Sidney Chambers (James Norton) decides to leave his parish in the second episode (of six), thanks to American minister’s daughter Violet Todd (Simona Brown). “We really wanted to find a story that would allow Sidney a way to reinvigorate his faith,” executive producer Emma Kingsman-Lloyd told TV Guide Magazine last year.

(Credit: Courtesy of PBS Masterpiece)

Faith is also a struggle for his replacement, Rev. Will Davenport (Tom Brittney, Outlander), a motorcycle-riding, leather-jacket-wearing rebel with a cause, who takes Sidney’s place at the pulpit and as unofficial crime-solving companion to Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green).

Like Sidney, and countless other hauntingly handsome mystery-series leading men, Will proves intriguing in a compassionate, tortured soul kind of way. An episode featuring his father offers insight into his sometimes volatile temperament. But Will is no antihero. He may stumble, but his heart won’t stray from his mission to his flock. That’s something viewers can take faith in.

Grantchester, Season 4, Tuesday, February 25, Amazon Prime Video