'Grantchester' Recap: Season 9 Episode 3

Grantchester airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous episode and other seasons. 
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Geordie is struggling to find a suitable drinking companion in the wake of Will’s departure. He at least isn’t lacking excitement: while he shares a pint with Leonard, Mrs. C rushes into the pub to say a “swarthy” gentleman is breaking into the vicarage.

Geordie, Leonard, and Mrs. C hustle to the vicarage. Geordie enters the open door by himself and grabs a man from behind, knocking a box full of dishes to the ground. He’s rewarded with a powerful punch, and quickly realizes his mistake – the man is the new vicar, unpacking his belongings in his new home. Geordie ashamedly apologizes.

Alphy Kottaram is South Asian and thus faces suspicion throughout small-town Grantchester. Mrs. C is unsettled by the “foreign” vicar, even though Alphy was born in England. Everyone goes quiet when Alphy enters the pub, and the bartender is surly towards him. One man assumes Alphy was converted to Christianity by a missionary. Only Leonard, Jack, and Mrs. C attend a meeting organized by Alphy to introduce himself to the parish.

He is more welcomed by Rachel Baron when he goes for a swim in the creek near the vicarage. Even though she initially tells him he’s trespassing on her family’s property, she is friendly towards him – and admiring of his abs. He has a funeral to preside over that afternoon for an Albert Baron and learns that Albert is Rachel’s father. Albert died by suicide, shooting himself with his rifle in the field near where they are now speaking.

Rachel and her brother Harvey are the only attendees at Albert’s funeral – until Lionel and Jamie Walker, a father and son, enter. Harvey hits Lionel and shouts at him to leave. He believes Lionel killed his father, but Lionel denies it.

Alphy brings Geordie in, then leaves him to adjudicate the dispute. Turns out it’s a long-running one: the Barons and Walkers have been fighting for centuries over the field where Albert died, arguing about who owns it. While Albert’s death was ruled a suicide and accepted as such by Harvey, Harvey changed his mind when he received his dad’s possessions and found that the rifle wasn’t his father’s. It’s the same style, but Albert notched his with hunting kills.

Geordie asks Alphy for help with the case. But Alphy doesn’t like the police; Geordie only convinces him to let Geordie examine Albert’s body before it is buried by telling him that he has learned empathy from Alphy’s predecessors. Geordie forces Alphy to come with him to the station, where Ms. Scott and Larry take his statement. Geordie has a “thing for vicars,” they tell Alphy, and he misses Will. Ms. Scott flirts with Alphy, to Larry’s embarrassment.

Geordie announces that it would have been difficult for the right-handed Albert to shoot himself with a long rifle near his right shoulder. Alphy goes home and keeps thinking about this assertion and the case.

The next day, Alphy has a pre-wedding meeting that was set up by Will. It’s for Rachel Baron and Jamie Walker. They’re marrying despite the acrimony between their two families; Jamie would leave love letters for Rachel in an old oak on the disputed property. Once married, they can sell the disputed property and end the whole argument.

And yet Rachel kisses Alphy while seeing him out, to his shock – and he sees Jamie and Harvey Baron talking intimately together in a field.

When Leonard brings dinner to the vicarage to apologize to Alphy for thinking he was breaking in, Alphy asks him about Rachel and Jamie. Leonard admits that he thinks Jamie is gay, and reveals his own homosexuality to Alphy as well. Alphy and Leonard bond over their shared difference from homogenous Grantchester – and over reading Dostoyevsky.

Alphy later wanders through the contested field and finds himself drawn to the oak there. He climbs the tree and finds a love note from Jamie – for Harvey, not Rachel. It apologizes for getting married, as Alphy explains to Geordie when he appears – both the Walkers and Barons called him because someone was trespassing on their property.

Alphy is intrigued by the case, even though he pretends not to be. He’s drawn further in when Lionel comes to the chapel and tells him that he’ll miss Albert – and that he should have “done more,” and maybe Albert would still be alive.

Alphy goes straight to Geordie with this admission, but Geordie points out that Lionel and all the children have an alibi: there’s a photo showing them at the pub for Rachel and Jamie’s engagement party at the hour Albert was killed. But Alphy has already noticed that the pub’s clock is an hour behind. He decides to join Geordie for further investigation.

Lionel is brought to the police station – and a bloody handkerchief with his initials on it is found in his jacket pocket. He claims not to know where it came from. He does admit that he went to see Albert in the field at Albert’s behest. Albert wanted to stop the wedding, because he knew that Jamie and Harvey were the ones actually in love. Lionel refused to believe it, the two men argued, and Lionel’s rifle went off, hitting Albert. Lionel tried to stop the bleeding, but left when he heard someone coming – Albert was still alive. Lionel left his handkerchief there.

The investigation is halted when Cathy comes to the station, fearful because Esme has not come home. Geordie introduces Cathy to Alphy, then begrudgingly sets off with Alphy to find his daughter. While walking through town, they realize that their professions are similar: they both help people find answers. They find Esme at the pub with friends.

Back at the vicarage, Alphy notices something odd in the photo accompanying Rachel and Jamie’s engagement announcement in the paper: Rachel has a handkerchief peeking out of her pocket. He goes to tell Geordie.

They deduce that Rachel saw her father and Lionel fight – she’s the person who approached, and Lionel assumed she would help Albert. But instead she sat with him as he bled out, then took Lionel’s handkerchief and planted it on him while he and Harvey argued at her father’s funeral. She didn’t want the truth – that her fiancé is in love with her brother – to come out; the confusing and embarrassing nature of it already led her to wantonly kiss Alphy. She wanted the arguments over the land to finally end, so she let her father die.

Feeling confident after solving his first case, Alphy introduces himself individually to every person who attends his first church service, making them squirm under his friendliness – to Leonard’s delight. He then retreats to the pub, where he and Geordie share a pint – they have found their drinking companions. Geordie asks Alphy if he has some tragic past or secret as his two predecessors did. Alphy replies no – he just likes football. He and Geordie can agree on that.