'Grantchester' Recap: Season 11 Episode 5

Grantchester airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous episode and other seasons. 
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Miss Scott still hasn’t told Larry she’s pregnant. Geordie still hasn’t told Alphy he applied for a promotion. And Alphy has yet to speak to the bishop to ask him to let Leonard return to the church in some form. 

He’ll have a chance soon enough, when a corpse is found on a forest path with a Bible nearby and an invitation to a retreat at the bishop’s palace in his pocket. The man is soaking wet, although he’s some distance from a nearby river. The Bible is a King James version, a more traditional translation than what Alphy, for instance, uses at his church. Alphy did not receive the invitation to the bishop’s palace.

He’s one of the few who didn’t, it seems, when he, Geordie, and Larry arrive there to ask about the corpse. David Lane is there, touting his new guitar, as is John Planer, who has just returned from missionary work in Tanganyika with an impressive amount of converts to his name. The bishop pretends that Alphy’s invitation got lost in the mail and dismisses Geordie and Larry since there’s barely a connection to the dead man. Geordie asks Alphy to stay and watch for anything suspicious.

This has the benefit of putting Alphy in the same house as Meg, who is the bishop’s daughter. But it also means he has to interact with venal vicars. He bonds with John over their dislike of the others, and John switches rooms with Alphy, taking the worse one the bishop has assigned Alphy in a slight dig against the bishop.

Alphy sees plenty of suspicious behavior. The vicar Jerry nervously asks to speak to the bishop privately. David surreptitiously calls the egotistical, lightly racist vicar Andrew away. Alphy goes to see what they’re up to and finds them arguing in an out of the way spot, holding a dripping priest’s robe. Alphy calls Larry and Geordie back to the palace.

Larry has identified the dead man, recognizing him from time he’s spent in jail after harassing some local churches. He’s a homeless alcoholic named Martin Mallon. He drowned to death, even though he was found on land. Larry suggests that he died from secondary drowning, getting water in his lungs that killed him after he resurfaced and walked away from the water.

The bishop again tries to turn Geordie and Larry away, but they insist on questioning the vicars. David reveals that Andrew fought with Martin. The man approached Andrew while he was traveling to the bishop’s palace but Andrew told him he didn’t want to talk to him, despite a priest’s obligation to help those in need. In fact, Andrew wanted money his congregation had donated to Martin without his knowledge back, as he has overspent in furnishing his church with golden objects. 

Andrew didn’t drown Martin. The man was already wet when he pushed Andrew into the water. Andrew enlisted his old schoolmate David to hide his sopping robe. 

The anxious vicar Jerry also had an encounter with Martin: he’s the one who called the police on him, leading to Martin’s night in jail. Martin came to Jerry’s church a few times for help but was drunk. Jerry abdicated his duty to care for him to the police, because he feared Martin, who he thinks stole his invitation to the bishop’s retreat when he came to his house one day. Jerry regrets his cowardice; he even asked the bishop for forgiveness. 

Alphy is disgusted by the failures of his fellow churchmen. But he’s not sad to run into Meg again, when she comes into his room while he’s getting ready for bed and shirtless. He’s bunked in her room, which she has been forced to abandon for the weekend, and she needs he toothbrush. When Alphy asks her about the vicars, she says her father has been tense lately, holed up in his office on the phone.

Geordie also has to hobnob with colleagues, having been invited to an event with his superiors. Given his possible promotion, he’s out to impress and wants Cathy’s support. But she gets wrapped up at her clothing store with the accountant Switch, talking about her dreams over a bottle of wine. She completely misses Geordie’s event, where he is informed that the promotion is his, and is drunk when she finally makes it home. She lies and tells a disappointed Geordie that she was drinking alone. 

The next day, while the vicars are praying, Alphy sneaks into the bishop’s office and finds a letter about John Planer and possible infractions that led to his recall from missionary work in Tanganyika. Alphy then discovers that the bishop’s palace has an indoor pool and has a thought. He goes to the police station and asks for police reports from Tanganyika and about the composition of the water that drowned Martin.

It was chlorinated, just like the bishop’s pool. And there were three unexplained drownings in Tanganyika recently; there haven’t been any since John left. 

Geordie and Alphy find John reading a Bible at the bishop’s palace. Alphy asks to see it: it’s a King James version, just like the one found with Martin’s corpse. John flees but Alphy quickly catches him. John tries to strangle Alphy and Geordie catches up to knock him off his friend.

Safely apprehended, John reveals his fervid fanaticism. Unlike the other vicars, he tried to help Martin when he approached him: he tried to save his soul by baptising him against his will in the pool by which he was sitting, just like he did the three people in Tanganyika who drowned. Martin wandered off with the Bible John gave him and died later.

Alphy returns home to find Leonard there, crying. He’s worried about the boy Raymond Haynes, whose mother is dead and father is dying. Leonard has been helping them at home, and promised Marcus to make sure that Raymond is safe and taken care of after Marcus dies. 

Leonard is the kind of priest Alphy believes the church should have; he has also helped Miss Scott as she worried about her pregnancy, which will mean the end of her career. When the bishop arrives at the vicarage to apologize to Alphy about John, Alphy tells him they need better priests than the rotten ones they currently have. The bishop unequivocally rejects a role for Leonard, a homosexual. He also tells Alphy he didn’t invite him to the retreat because of his past relationship with Meg. The bishop explains that everyone is flawed, including the other vicars; Alphy retorts that they get another chance while he and Leonard don’t because of prejudice towards their sexuality and race. He asks the bishop to leave.

He’s facing an uncertain future. Miss Scott has finally told Larry about her pregnancy, to Larry’s delight, while Geordie has told Alphy about his promotion. Alphy is happy – but Geordie explains it means they will work on fewer cases together.