Grantchester, ITV1, review: thank heavens Robson Green is going nowhere

Robson Green as Geordie Keating
Robson Green as DI Geordie Keating - Stuart Wood/ITV

This has been a funny old series of Grantchester (ITV1). Rev Will Davenport went off the rails. Riven with guilt after accidentally killing someone in a traffic accident, and convinced that God had abandoned him, he took to brawling in bars and developed an addiction to anti-anxiety medication. Then he disappeared, leaving his heavily pregnant wife alone. Apparently it’s now inappropriate to use this phrase because it reinforces gender stereotypes and all that, but use it I shall: man up, Will.

In the series finale he did. Sort of. Rescued after a pub fight by the world’s nicest policeman (Mark Benton) and taken back to the world’s cosiest police station, he was still feeling sorry for himself. When Geordie (Robson Green) arrived to pick him up – “I found him. Like Jesus in the wilderness. Only Colchester” – he said what most viewers were surely thinking: “You selfish b-----d. Bonnie and Ernie, your baby – they deserve so much better than this.”

And then Will’s mope-a-thon was interrupted by a double murder in this sleepy Essex village. It was solved in about 15 minutes of screen time – a teenage boy confessed to the killing, but didn’t really do it. While Geordie was finding clues at the scene, Will was deploying his more spiritual mode of detection. “I don’t know an awful lot,” he told the boy, “but I know a good soul when I meet them.”

From there it was a short hop to ditching the pills, going back home, taking a punch from Bonnie and then reverting to Nice Will, such a new man that he insisted on being in the delivery room for his baby’s birth, which was not the done thing in the Sixties, as Geordie noted; “It’s weird that Will went in there. He knows what he’s about to witness, right?”

There was a cockle-warming, happy ending for all – Geordie is no longer facing the threat of forced retirement, Will and Bonnie are proud parents to little James George Davenport, and the final scenes featured the baptism in which Will made no reference to Christianity but instead made a little speech about watching the sunrise and catching the stars, like an inspirational Instagram post come to life.

Tom Brittney, who plays Will, has announced that he will be leaving in the next series. He was a pleasant successor to James Norton but, really, Grantchester belongs to Green. What a relief that he’s going nowhere. A scene in which he clasped Will’s hand as they drove back home, saying nothing and never taking his eyes off the road, was truly lovely.