Sunday, September 26, 2021

TV Worth Talking About

Season 6 of Grantchester, the charming historical whodunit series inspired by James Runcie's books and starring Robson Green and Tom Brittney, is evidently already airing in Great Britain. However, its eight episodes won’t start rolling out before American viewers until Sunday, October 3, as part of as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece lineup.

As the Masterpiece Web site explains, the show’s action has now moved on to 1958, “and trouble is brewing in the Cambridgeshire village of Grantchester. Reverend Will Davenport (Tom Brittney, Greyhound) relishes his role as a firebrand vicar, but the very role he loves puts him at odds with his own ideals when [gay Anglican curate] Leonard [Fitch] (Al Weaver) is caught up in a scandal. Meanwhile, [Detective Inspector] Geordie [Keating] (Robson Green) finds his principles shaken, Mrs. Chapman (Tessa Peake-Jones) is distraught, and Geordie’s wife, Cathy (Kacey Ainsworth), is defiant. With new crimes around every corner, and morality and legality at odds, it’s going to take all of Will’s skill and empathy to navigate these choppy waters and help the ones he loves.”

Grantchester will continue on Masterpiece through November 21. Mystery Fanfare features a two-minute Season 6 teaser.

In the meantime, Season 2 of the excellent Baptiste will commence on PBS come Sunday, October 17. Here’s the official plot synopsis:
The second season of this spinoff of The Missing follows retired detective Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) as he delves into Budapest’s corrupt underworld to find a British Ambassador’s family who go missing on a skiing holiday in the Hungarian mountains. Ambassador Emma Chambers, played by Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve), is thrust into the crosshairs of Baptiste’s most complex case to date, as the detective navigates an untrustworthy police force and international media interest as he hunts for her husband and two sons.
Like Baptiste’s premiere season, this new one will be six episodes long, carrying watchers through November 21.

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While we’re talking television, let me point you toward a couple of other stories. First off, the British magazine Radio Times has a bit of information about the sophomore series of Vienna Blood, the Victorian-era mystery drama based on Frank Tallis’ novels. That three-part show—starring Matthew Beard as brilliant young psychoanalyst-in-training Max Liebermann, and Jürgen Maurer as Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt—was one of the programs that helped my wife and I get through the early, lockdown days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I’m quite pleased at the prospect of its returning to U.S. screens sometime soon, following it’s broadcast in the UK.

Radio Times has still photos from the new production, plus this vague plot description: “At the end of season one, Max hopes he’ll still be able to be involved in criminal investigations. Thankfully his wish is granted when Oskar comes to visit him at his new private practice and lures him back into another fascinating case ripe for a Freudian approach. But while his relationship with his friend Oskar becomes more stable, his private life gets even more chaotic.”

Wikipedia makes clear that this follow-up series of Vienna Blood will also be limited to three installments.

Second, I see that The Killing Times has posted a trailer for The Chestnut Man, a Danish production based on a 2018 novel of the same name by Søren Sveistrup, creator of the crime series The Killing. This show is set to debut on Netflix come September 29. Here’s a description of its suspense-filled story:
The Chestnut Man takes place in a quiet suburb of Copenhagen, where the police make a terrible discovery on a stormy October morning. A young woman is found brutally murdered in a playground and one of her hands is missing. Above her hangs a small man of chestnuts.

Ambitious young detective Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) and her new partner, Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), are assigned to the case and before long, they find a piece of mysterious evidence on the ‘chestnut man’—evidence linking it all to a girl who disappeared a year earlier and was presumed dead: the daughter of Social Affairs Minister Rosa Hartung (Iben Dorner).
Hmm. Perhaps that’s not a tale for the faint of heart.

READ MORE:The Killing Times Impressively ENORMOUS 2021 Autumn/Winter Preview” (The Killing Times).

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