Two female detectives, one motherly, the other emotionally immature, have varying levels of success applying their eccentric outlooks on life to their police cases and private lives.

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the King dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope and most of Europe oppose him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer, and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

The drama follows a group of inspirational women in a rural Cheshire community where the shadow of World War II is casting a dark cloud over their lives. The isolated village couldn't feel further away from the impending bloodshed and battlefields and yet it is not immune from the effects of war. As the conflict takes hold, and separates the women from their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers, the women find themselves under increasing and extraordinary pressures in a rapidly fragmenting world.

It's 1953, and Sidney Chambers is vicar of Grantchester, a village just outside Cambridge. Sidney's life is a quiet life - right up until the moment that murder comes his way. Pushed into the dangerous world of lies, betrayal and murder, Sidney quickly finds that his insight into the human condition, and the natural trust that he engenders in people, means that he excels in his new position as 'detective'. Joining Sidney as he journeys into this dark world is the affable but world-weary Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, the naive, but well-meaning curate Leonard Finch, and his austere and constantly disapproving housekeeper Mrs Maguire. But crime isn't the only matter that occupies Sidney. He's smitten with the witty, beautiful, Amanda, but could high society Amanda ever be allowed to marry a lowly country vicar? Can you still see the best in people when the world of murder asks you to see the worst?

Betsy

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