'Grantchester' Recap: Season 11 Episode 2

Grantchester airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous episode and other seasons. 
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Alphy’s newly discovered mother Mira is continuing to make regular visits to Grantchester to see him, despite the awkwardness of her first one. While he’s showing her his church, a student tries to break in. Alphy chases him down, and the student, Norris Featherstone, immediately apologizes when he’s caught. He’s struggling to fit in during his first year at college, and so is doing uncharacteristic things like trying to steal a Bible from a church as part of an initiation. Feeling sorry for the boy, Alphy gives him his own Bible, making Norris promise to return it.

Mira worries to Geordie that she and Alphy live vastly different lives: she’s Hindu, he’s an Anglican priest. Alphy wants to prepare her Indian food the next time she visits to make her more comfortable, so when Leonard appears to talk to him about something, Alphy instead sends Leonard off to the store to buy ingredients. 

Leonard wants to return to the church in some form. His halfway house has been relatively empty, and he has found he lacks a spiritual purpose. When he finally gets to talk to Alphy, he asks him to speak to the bishop on his behalf. Alphy warns it’s a long shot but promises to do so.

Geordie doesn’t have to go asking for a life change: it comes to him, when his commander announces that he’s retiring and that Geordie should consider applying for his job.

The promotion could mean avoiding such dismal tasks as dealing with a brawling group of students brought into the station that includes Norris. They’re rival quiz teams from Cambridge and Oxford, and the leader of the Cambridge team, Simon Bailey, not only taunts his counterparts but the police. Geordie keeps him in a cell overnight while the others are released.

Simon’s professor, Adams, comes in the morning to plead for Simon’s release. The team is preparing for the new TV quiz show University Challenge (still running today!), and Adams invited the Oxford team for some practice rounds. Geordie lets Simon return to his college.

But there’s more trouble: Norris has been found dead in his room, a belt around his neck and an Oxford scarf tying his hands behind his back. There’s no sign of forced entry, suggesting suicide, but the knot in the scarf would be difficult to tie on oneself. In Norris’ room is Alphy’s Bible. His ink blotter has the words “Barbara’s tea room” on it, perhaps the last thing he wrote – even though there are no letters or diaries in his room with those words. There is a vial of stimulant drugs in his pocket. 

Adams insists no one on the Cambridge team could be responsible for the murder – they’re the best of the best. He says he ran into one of the Oxford students wandering the campus late last night.

Geordie brings in the student, Russell Tring, for questioning. Russell’s initials are on the scarf used to tie Norris’ hands – but he says someone stole it from him last night. Adams visits the police station and talks to Russell, who attacks him and accuses him of Norris’ murder. 

Russell admits that he and Norris went to the same school as boys, and Alphy and Geordie intuit that they were more than friends. Indeed, Norris referred to Russell as “Martha” in his diaries so that their homosexuality wouldn’t be revealed. Nevertheless, Russell’s parents found out about their relationship and made sure they never saw each other again and attended separate colleges. To engineer more meetings, Norris suggested that they both join their college’s quiz teams – but then when Russell visited Cambridge and finally got to see Norris again, Norris avoided him.

This is because Norris was struggling to fit in and didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of people like Simon Bailey, who is stuck-up and confident even to Geordie and Alphy. Even though Norris didn’t have any of the drugs found in his pocket in his system at death, Simon says Norris tried to offer them to the rest of the quiz team. 

Norris’ body shows bruising and cigarette burns, some older than the day of his death, suggesting he was being abused. Furthermore, Russell says Norris wrote to him that Adams held the threat of expulsion over the heads of his quiz team to induce them to work harder after getting them so drunk at a chophouse that they were kicked out. But Russell burned the letters.

Adams defends his methods and admits that he suggested the drugs to Norris. He, too, is snobby towards Geordie and Alphy. Geordie has Miss Scott look through recent burglaries at pharmacists; she finds a report of someone who looked like a student stealing the stimulant drug from one. Perhaps Adams found out Norris was gay and was holding this over him, like the chophouse incident, to push him to steal drugs and work harder?

Whatever writing from Norris’ room that contained “Barbara’s tea room” has yet to surface, so perhaps his murderer took it and it revealed Norris was gay. Russell explains that the last time he and Norris spent time together, they went to the seaside town of Southport and enjoyed a meal at Barbara’s tea room there. 

To get Adams to confess, Alphy challenges his team to a quiz, and has Leonard slip an extra question in. Alphy’s team does surprisingly well, but the real shock is when Simon blurts out “Barbara’s tea room” in answer to a question about Southport. He must have stolen whatever Norris wrote before he died.

Alphy and Geordie search Simon’s room and find a letter from Norris hidden there. It’s a suicide note addressed to Russell. It reveals that Simon tormented him mentally and physically after Adams pitted the two of them against each other. Simon was the one using the drugs, and the one who found out Norris was gay and used it blackmail him to steal more drugs. Simon was in a jail cell when Norris died by suicide, but he found his body, took the suicide note to cover his tracks, and bound his hands with Russell’s scarf to further misdirect.

Russell’s scarf was in Norris’ room because Norris took it during the brawl at the police station, as he explains to Russell in his letter. He loved him. Alphy gives Russell the letter.

Alphy is still confused how he feels towards Meg after they mutually decided to just be friends, particularly since Alphy’s obsession with knowing more about his mother was distracting him from their relationship. Now he runs into her while out with his mother in Grantchester. Mira is shocked by the warm relationship between the pair, worrying that Alphy is attracting attention as a priest interacting with a woman – even though marriage is not forbidden by his vows. 

Mira once again worries to Geordie about Alphy: she might hurt him. Geordie warns her that Alphy is in things for the long haul, so Mira should tell him now if she’s not. Geordie also warns Alphy to lower his expectations for his relationship with Mira, and Mrs. C. advises the same thing when Mira fails to show up for the Indian dinner he cooks – even if Leonard, Daniel, Mrs. C, and Jack are there, not realizing they weren’t invited. 

Mira doesn’t even leave a message explaining herself. Alphy seeks out Meg and asks her to lunch, then realizes another man is waiting for her and apologizes. They agreed to just be friends, after all.