Criminal skulduggery and genteel English villages go together like Prince Andrew and sensibly-priced pizza chains. And it was back to that fantasy realm of redbrick boozers, apple-cheeked locals and violent crime that we returned for the ninth series of Father Brown (BBC One), in which Fast Show and Harry Potter star Mark Williams donned a collar and black shift to portray GK Chesterton’s eponymous sleuthing cleric.
Chesterton’s probing padre is not quite in the first rank of Great British detectives. But if his name recognition falls some way short of Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes, this long-running adaptation of the Chesterton novels has nonetheless quietly won a significant and loyal fanbase and is the BBC’s highest-rating daytime drama.
As it re-emerged to light up a dreary January lunchtime, its appeal was immediately obvious. With Cluedo-style mysteries and mid-Century charms – the setting is the Cotswold village of Kembleford in the Fifties – it was as cosy and comforting as a snuggle with a hotwater bottle or a night in with a good brandy.
Brown’s skills as amateur detective were required after the lord of nearby Darlington Estate was stabbed to death in bed. A grisly crime took on a conspiratorial hue when Sergeant Goodfellow (John Burton) witnessed his superior, the nebbish Inspector Mallory (Jack Deam), planting a murder weapon in the room of the victim’s son, Lawrence Darlington (Ralph Davis).
Goodfellow tipped off Father Brown and his Scooby Doo-style gang of crime solvers that included Sorcha Cusack’s Mrs McCarthy and Alex Price’s Sid Carter. Collared by the priest, Mallory quickly confessed the truth: a bounder named Bill (Craig Conway) had kidnapped his family and forced the Inspector to frame Lawrence.
Bill, it was revealed, was out for revenge against Mallory. The Inspector had destroyed his life years earlier by putting him behind bars for a crime of which he was not guilty (although he had committed plenty of others).
But the criminal was also in cahoots with a dashing rake who had a track record in seducing wealthy young women and helping himself to their fortunes. As chance would have it, Lord Darlington’s daughter, Arabella (Anna Munden), had recently been caught up in a whirlwind romance with a new beau, Charles. He stood to gain all if Arabella’s brother was convicted and the inheritance passed to her.
Father Brown lacked the revisionist bite of Sarah Phelps’s Agatha Christie adaptations or the post-modern razzle dazzle of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock.
But not every series has to reinvent the wheel. And the BBC’s slice of rosary bead noir succeeded at a canter in conjuring a fairytale England, the bucolic joys of which were thrown into sharp relief by the odd bit of homicidal naughtiness. In gloomiest January, with the thrill of Christmas well and truly faded, it was the perfect pick-me-up.
