Mystery Series ‘Grantchester’ Comes to America This January
New period mystery series Grantchester follows the story of Sidney Chambers – played by James Norton, whom you may have seen recently in dramas like Death Comes to Pemberley and Happy Valley – stars as Sidney Chambers, a young and charismatic vicar who turns amateur investigator when one of his parishioners dies under suspicious circumstances. Chambers ends up seeking out the help of the gruff, down-to-earth police inspector Geordie Keating (played by Wire in the Blood’s Robson Green) and the two – in the tradition of pretty much crime drama since time immemorial – become crime-solving partners and unlikely friends.
Based on the James Runcie novel Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, which draws on Runcie’s own experiences as a vicar, the drama also features Twenty Twelve’s Morven Christie, Kacey Ainsworth, Tessa Peake-Jones and more.
The original ITV trailer promoting the show’s debut offers a particularly intriguing way of looking at the series – through the lens of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style morality test. It’s a traditional television promo yes, but it offers you several options as to what you’d do in a given situation within the trailer’s narrative, and your decisions (based on clickable options within the clip itself), will show you different clips. It’s pretty awesome, actually, and well worth playing around with.
Watch the main trailer and make your choices accordingly:
There are 15 additional snippets that you can unlock by way of navigating different paths around and through the Grantchester trailer. If you don’t feel like figuring out all the available combinations of clicks, you can just watch them all at this playlist here. But you should totally play around with it for a few minutes. It's very fun and super creative.
The six-part drama is wrapping up its first season in the UK, to largely favorable reviews, and is slated to make its US debut on January 18 at 10pm, following Downton Abbey, as part of an expansion of Masterpiece’s slate of programming in 2015.
What do you think of Grantchester? Does it look like something you’d watch?
