Everything To Remember Ahead of 'Grantchester' Season 5

When Grantchester Season 5 arrives on Masterpiece on Sunday, June 14, it will mark the end of a significant period of upheaval. After three seasons with leading man James Norton, Season 4 transitioned from Norton to Tom Brittney as the series' priest. Season 5 will be Brittney's first full year, and some new changes are afoot, even as the show settles back into its original mystery solving-in-a-small-town rhythm.

But how did we get here? Let's go back to the beginning.

Grantchester, based on James Runcie's The Grantchester Mysteries short stories, started as a direct page to screen adaptation of the first novel, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death. The series starred Norton as title character Rev. Sidney Chambers, with Robson Green as his detective pal, DCI Geordie Keating. But by the time Season 1 ended, the series was already marching off in its own direction, and by Season 2 it had all but abandoned the books other than as the odd jumping-off point for the weekly mystery. The series was also no longer really about solving crimes as much as it was an ensemble piece full of the drama of small-town life.

The show also focused as much on Sidney's friends as it did the main lead. Geordie, for instance, has an affair with his secretary, Margaret Ward (Seline Hizli), who also happens to be Sidney's ex-girlfriend. This disastrous choice nearly ends his marriage to Cathy (Kacey Ainsworth) and causes his eldest daughter, Esme (Skye Lucia Degruttola), to resent him. The closeted curate Leonard (Al Weaving) finds love for the first time with a photographer, Daniel (Oliver Dimsdale), after a near-miss with marriage. The housekeeper, Sylvia Maguire (Tessa Peake-Jones), known as Mrs. M, discovers that her husband, whom she believed dead, merely abandoned her. She struggles to accept her life, even as she falls in love (and eventually marries) the good widower Jack Chapman (Nick Brimble), which makes her Mrs. C.