Tension adds to mystery

G. K. Chesterton did a rather odd thing during his lifetime.

The writer, journalist and political thinker behind the Father Brown mysteries began, as one does, as an Anglican.

Then he converted to the church of the Roman Catholics.

And the latest BBC dramatisation of the Father Brown short stories appears to pick up on the tension between Catholics and those who choose to deny the universal authority of the Pope (often known as Protestants).

Father Brown, of course, is a short, rotund Catholic priest with an uncanny insight into human evil and a penchant for solving crimes.

Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley from Harry Potter) is our hero, a mild-mannered fellow with a quiet but impressive intellect, who is a student of the human condition.

And he not only solves crimes - his main quest is to save souls.

The show begins on UKTV next Sunday week with The Hammer of God, episode one of a series of stories based on the original writings.

Mark Williams' Father Brown is a crumpled sort of fellow who manages an impressive wobble on the black bicycle he uses to tear around his small country village.

He has a pleasing interest in timepieces, and, more importantly, correct time-keeping.

The series features elderly ladies with award-winning scones, Polish ladies with thick calves and a powerful blacksmith with a decent wife who has strayed - but only to protect him.

Set in the early 1950s, it also features a local cad with an interest in gambling, blackmail, and the pleasures of the flesh.

And when the clearly non-Catholic church nearby has an afternoon tea to celebrate new slate on its roof and a new clock in its tower, things start to go awry.

The local cad turns up with his head badly stoved in, and the blacksmith appears for it, until his wife confesses.

She confesses to the law, at least, but when Father Brown investigates her first words are: ''Bless me Father, for I have sinned ...''

Then the real truth begins to become clear.

Father Brown solves his crimes through a reasoning process concerned with spiritual and philosophic truths - the opposite of the deduction used by fellow fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

The Hammer of God cleverly merges his role as the protector of the village's souls and amateur sleuth to get to the truth.

And that truth focuses the guilt on the local reverend at the local non-Catholic (I'm sure it's meant to be Anglican) church.

Ten episodes of Father Brown, filmed in the Cotswolds in England last year, were shown in the United Kingdom in January and begin here on August 18.

The show's success means a second series has apparently been commissioned.

- Charles Loughrey 

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