Grantchester, Series 2, ITV

Author James Runcie (son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury) hit on a cunning formula with his Grantchester Mysteries. Since the British are incurably addicted to maverick detectives, country house mysteries, clergymen who are part-time sleuths and foul deeds in the heart of the English countryside, why not just repackage the lot like a larcenous Greatest Hits? Take one cleric, add one copper, plant 'em in the Grantchester meadows... Now That's What I Call Crime!

Cometh the book, and in 2014 followeth the first TV series. Ratings were pretty good, so here's the follow-up. The timing is excellent, since it finds James Norton (playing forensic vicar Sidney Chambers) riding a publicity wave after his role in War and Peace and his return as the hideous Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley. His Chambers is an upstandingly decent fellow and a virtual caricature of Church of England agreeableness. Although this is set in the 1950s, he still looks like the kind of chap who would have sat in his trench on the Somme writing wistful poetry amid the crash of shellfire.

They cranked up the Rural Idyll dial to 11 for the opening scene, in which Chambers and his chippy policeman pal Geordie Keating (Robson Green) were enjoying a sunlit family picnic on the banks of the River Cam. There was even a bit of hearty male bonding when the lads went swimming together. Yet as they headed home, a cluster of storm clouds suddenly squealed to a halt right overhead. The police pulled Sidney in for the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl, Abigail Redmond (Gracie Brooke, pictured above). It was like being told that Mary Berry is an enthusiastic amateur vivisectionist.  

Inevitably, it wasn't long before a more complex picture began to emerge. An aggressive grilling by CI Benson (David Troughton) was enough to put Chambers in the clear, despite claims by the girl's father (a bristlingly livid Neil Morrissey, pictured below) that her diary was full of damning evidence that he'd been having an affair with her. But, in the finest worm-in-the-bud tradition, a bit of dogged leg-work began to unearth all kinds of sordid frightfulness lurking in the rhododendrons.

For a start, Abigail turned up dead at the studio of squalid photographer Daniel Marlowe (Oliver Dimsdale). He'd been luring her into baring all, or most of it, for magazines traditionally described as "smutty". Then the painfully shy Gary (Sam Frenchum) revealed that Abigail had confessed she was pregnant. He'd tried to help her induce a miscarriage by forcing a bottle of turpentine down her throat, with coroner-evoking consequences. This awakened a vengeful streak in Keating, who began grunting darkly about "when they hang the bastard..."

It was becoming grotesque. It transpired that Norton's fellow-cleric, the Rev Sam Milburn (Andrew Knott), had taken a deplorably hands-on interest in Abigail, and had now been spirited away by the Archdeacon, played by Geoff McGivern as a bullying ecclesiastical enforcer. Despite Chambers's concluding sermon about forgiveness and responsibility, Grantchester is starting to look like Operation Yewtree Goes to Gomorrah. Lock up your daughters, and sons for good measure.

• Grantchester Christmas Special reviewed on theartsdesk