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Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times Book EditorYou may be forgiven if you are wondering why, in our trending-secular world, there are currently, not one, but TWO priests solving crimes on PBS, part of the post-”Downton Abbey” British invasion currently dominating the public TV airwaves.
Those would be Father Brown, Catholic priest, and Canon Sidney Chambers, Anglican clergyman.
I have followed this development with interest because ... yes, I have read all the books. As so often with PBS, first comes the book, then the TV version.
I was introduced to Father Brown years ago by a snobbish Devon bookseller. I had peeked into her bookshop with all the shy ardor of a Henry James debutante. I asked her for reading recommendations.
She looked over her half-moon glasses and down her patrician nose at me, all a-quiver with an American’s delight in being in an ENGLISH BOOKSTORE, and said. “Well (long pause). You might try Father Brown.”
Father Brown is the creation of a brilliant mind, the polymath English author G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). Chesterton wrote novels, plays, essays, journalism and eventually, the Father Brown series, dozens of books about a crime-solving Catholic priest.
Chesterton was known as the Prince of Paradox for his ability to look at questions from all sides, intellectual and spiritual. Father Brown, while a very deft reasoner, primarily relies on his understanding of the human heart to solve crimes. As he says in “The Blue Cross,” in answer to the question of how a priest could know the criminal mind so well: “Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?” Good point
.
Sidney Chambers is the direct heir of Father Brown, according to his creator, James Runcie. Runcie is a British novelist and filmmaker steeped in the Anglican faith by virtue of the fact that his father, Robert Runcie, was the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Runcie acknowledges that Sidney is loosely based on his father — Robert Runcie, like Sidney, saw active service in World War II. As for the detective part ... Sidney Chambers is “an Anglican Father Brown, Morse with morals, or Barbara Pym with no clothes on,” he said in a Telegraph interview. (The no-clothes part: Sidney is an enthusiastic heterosexual, passionate about women, particularly the love of his life, Hildegard.) The author called the Grantchester Mysteries, six in all, “a moral history of postwar Britain.”
So, since Runcie has basically acknowledged his debt to Father Brown, what do these holy men have in common?
1. They are priests, preoccupied with problem of evil, and how it can coexist with a beneficent God. As Sidney says in the book “Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil,” eulogizing a murdered priest — “If there is a God, why is there evil? If there is not, why is there good?”
2. They both antagonize, then charm, the local police, who eventually turn to them for help in solving crimes. Father Brown has Inspector Sullivan, played in the PBS series by Tom Chambers. Sidney has Inspector Geordie Keating, played by Brit TV series superstar Robson Green, who does his best to tamp down his charismatic good looks in the service of portraying a harried family man, going gray fast and not happy about it.
3. They both have loquacious women assistants, either at the office or at home; Father Brown’s Mrs. McCarthy (Sorcha Cusack) and Sidney’s Mrs. Maguire (Tessa Peake-Jones). These women are Irish, outspoken, and in the case of Sidney’s Mrs. Maguire, quick on the draw with a Bible verse.
Differences? Sidney, as played by James Norton, is a dish — the women fall hard and fast for his chestnut hair and mobile mouth. Father Brown is played by Mark Williams, a comic character actor, and a great one. But since he’s chaste, any fires of attraction are thoroughly banked.
Sidney has a dog. Father Brown has an umbrella.
Bottom line: Both of these series are well worth the investment in time (let’s not forget that mythical English countryside I hope to ascend to when I die). Pure pleasure, with a dose of spirituality and ethics in the side.
As Runcie said in the Telegraph interview:
“My editor once said to me: ‘These are disguised sermons, aren’t they?’ I am not ashamed of that and I am hopeful that the television series, as well as being dramatic, consists of thoughtful and moral meditations on subjects such as loyalty, friendship, deceit, cruelty and generosity ... Hate the sin, but love the sinner ... ”
Mary Ann Gwinn: 206-464-2357 or mgwinn@seattletimes.com. Gwinn appears every Tuesday on TVW's "Well Read," discussing books with host Terry Tazioli (go to tvw.org/shows/well-read for archived episodes). On Twitter @gwinnma.
