Fatherly advice
Sleuthing parish leader Father Brown is on the job.
Father Brown Season 5 Fridays (from 16 June) BBC First (*119) 20:00
Move over, Sherlock Holmes – parttime detective, full-time man of the cloth Father Brown (Mark Williams) is sniffing around mystery cases in season 5 of British cop show Father Brown (2013- current). Not much has changed in the fictional English village of Kembleford, but Mark says that “the new series has a life of itself. And they are always great fun to make. When you go on set, it’s a case of ‘what have we got today?’” It turns out Father Brown and the actual police have a string of murder mysteries to solve.
SANTA’S LITTLE KIDNAPPER
Episode 1 is slightly longer (running an hour-and-a-half). It’s the Christmas special and in keeping with the spirit of the season [it aired in December 2016 in the UK], no one is murdered. But Father Brown has to help create a Christmas miracle and find a baby that was kidnapped at Lady Felicia’s (Nancy Carroll) Yuletide Ball.
MOVING OUT & MOVING IN
There’s a long wait – until episode 11 (25 August) – to find out what happened to Lady Felicia’s conman driver Sid Carter. Actor Alex Price dropped out after being cast as Draco Malfoy in the West End stage play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. The door is open for Sid to return and the same goes for socialite Lady Felicia. She’s only in the first two episodes before shuttling off with her husband [who’s never seen] – he’s been appointed as Governor Of Rhodesia. In real life, actress Nancy was also doing theatre work. So who’s adding drama to Kembleford with those two characters missing? Lady Felicia’s troublemaker niece Bunty (Emer Kenny) arrives in episode 2 (23 June) and she’s going to be a handful from the start – she’s a murder suspect when the maid is murdered. And in episode 14 (15 September), Charlotte Bailey (Allegra Marland) goes missing after strange UFOlike lights are spotted. Except she’s not quite herself when she returns…