If you had told me two weeks ago that today I would be enthusiastically recommending Cadfael to everyone I see, I would have thought you crazy. I’ve never been adverse to the charms of Masterpiece Mystery, but even this almost forgotten ’90s series featuring Sir Derek Jacobi as a crime-solving monk seemed a little too staid for me. How wrong I was, though. Cadfael is like watching Law & Order set in Game of Thrones. It’s a raucous medieval delight full of skulls, stabbing, corpses, and illicit affairs. Don’t let its polite title card fool you; Cadfael is the most metal mystery series ever made.
Cadfael takes place during “The Anarchy.” That is the time period’s literal name. As we learn in the first episode, England is divided between the camps who support Empress Maude (aka Queen Matilda), the deceased Henry I’s daughter and only surviving heir, and her cousin Stephen of Blois. Stephen has the support of the church, which means he can call himself King, but his reign is uneasy. Civil war has divided not just the nation, but households all over the country.
That’s just the backdrop for Cadfael. The series itself takes place in the southwestern town of Shrewsbury, where a famous cathedral still sits to this day. Our hero is Brother Cadfael (Derek Jacobi), a middle-aged monk who is something of a rebel in the monastery. He joined the church at the ripe old age of 40 and for fought for years in the Crusades. This not only gives Cadfael a pragmatic world-weariness, but an immense amount of empathy. It also means that he knows a lot about death, dying, and killing. This monk knows how to murder men….which comes in handy because the show has a bunch of murders.
Cadfael is freaking full of death. There are hundreds of men hung and thrown in the river in the first act of the first episode, tons of rich guys get clobbered over their heads for a bit of treasure, and even women are murdered in ghastly ways. (I’m thinking of the pregnant woman who gets shot with an arrow in her belly, and the sweet innocent whose defiled body is discovered preserved in a block of river ice later in Season 2.) Cadfael does not pull its proverbial punches. It is full of horrific crimes and the show’s focus is always on the morality of justice. Like another British mystery series starring a holy man as its primary detective — Grantchester — Cadfael uses these horrific crimes to contemplate the true meaning of good and evil. What sins are harder to forgive? And how badly does man’s own frailty get in the way of the greater good.
Lest you think Cadfael is nothing but bleakness, it’s actually a show full of light wit and entertaining characters. It embeds you in the world of medieval England, and makes the distant era of The Anarchy feel fresh and alive. It’s also super fun if you like to spy British stars acting on TV before they were famous. Jonny Lee Miller, Tara Fitzgerald, Anna Friel, Stephen Moyer, Toby Jones, and Lord Grantham himself, Hugh Bonneville, are just some of the familiar faces you’ll see pop up in old timey clothes and terrible wigs. However, the biggest revelation is probably young Sean Pertwee. You might best know him for playing Alfred on FOX’s insane Gotham, but way back in the day, he was Cadfael’s first season side-kick Hugh Beringar. Pertwee was re-cast in Season 2 which is really too bad because he plays the upstart sheriff with a beguiling mix of charm and bluster.
Overall, though, Cadfael is the kind of show I didn’t think could exist. It has the sprawl and grittiness of Game of Thrones and the contained community of a procedural. The show comes with beautiful performances, shocking plot twists, and a humane look at the past. It’s also totally badass and all about death. Cadfael is indeed totally metal, but in a way anyone can latch onto.
