Recap / Father Brown S 5 E 3

The Eve Of St. John is the third episode of the fifth season of Father Brown.

A local witches' wood is inherited by the leader of a pagan coven; the simple townsfolk of Kembleford are unamused. An ecumenical council is called to confer on ways to expel them, while Father Brown instead reaches out to them to break bread. The local drunk witnesses a ritual which he mistakes for a murder which is explained away, but then, a body is found in the witches' wood. The pagans are the natural suspects, as the victim was a former member of their coven, but it turns out her ties to Kembleford's spiritual circles run deeper than that.

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Tropes:

• Dying Declaration of Love: Of a sort; Reverend Allsworth proposes to Bunty after finding out they all have less than a week to live.
• Eye of Newt: Invoked sarcastically by Bunty when Reverend Allsworth asks what the pagans' wine is made of.
• Give Me a Sign: Somewhat invoked by Gillespie in justifying what led him to kill his own daughter.
• Hijacked by Jesus: Invoked in-universe. Eugene argues with Reverend Allsworth at dinner that the Christian holy days started out as pagan festival days — thus, Christianity owes its very existence to paganism.
• Human Sacrifice: Invoked and averted. Goggles Malone, the town drunk, witnesses the pagans performing a ritual with a sword, and reports it to the police as a murder. When Mallory and Goodfellow investigate, Mallory is annoyed, but then Goodfellow finds spots of blood. It turns out the sword was used to cut open a ritual garment, and the spots of blood are from voluntary bloodletting as a spiritual offering. The victim reveals themselves to the police, completely unharmed.
• I Have No Daughter: Gillespie, after his daughter becomes a pagan. He claims she was killed in WWII bombings.
• Information Wants to Be Free: The crux of the conflict between Lilith, the victim, and Selina, the priestess of the coven, that causes Lilith to become estranged from the group. Lilith plans to release a book to the public full of the pagan cult's sacred incantations; not to expose the religion, but rather to share it with the world and for it to grow.
• The Kindness of Strangers: Father Brown opts to invite the pagans to dinner to better get to know each other.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: The excuse that Bunty gives Reverend Allsworth, who fancies her, to let him down easy. She's Catholic, and he's Protestant, and it would never work.
• Nude Nature Dance: The coven performs their rituals "skyclad," that is, in the nude. Cue uncomfortable twinges from all the reserved townsfolk just upon hearing about it.
• Only Sane Man: While the ecumenical council plots to drive out the heathen menace, Father Brown rejects their mass hysteria and chooses instead to reach out to them, and invite them to dinner.
  • When Reverend Gillespie leads an almost literal torch and pitchfork mob to the home, Reverend Allsworthy has second thoughts, and tries to calm the mob, until Father Brown shames them into dispersing.
  • Despite his typically abrasive personality, Inspector Mallory also falls into this as, while he's decidedly dismissive of the members of the coven and their way of life, he also has absolutely no time for Gillespie and Allsworthy's moral panic and rabble rousing.
• Poison Mushroom: Zigzagged. Reverend Gillespie tosses some poison mushrooms into the basket after Bunty has collected wild mushrooms for Mrs. McCarthy, intending to kill the entire dinner party. Averted when Mrs. M. says she didn't actually use the mushrooms in the basket at all.
• Race Against the Clock: Inverted. Father Brown discovers about the poison mushrooms, and races back to dinner, only to find everyone has finished their soup. They estimate they have a week to live, at most.
• Sinister Minister: Gillespie.
• Talkative Loon: Gillespie, while being arrested, can't stop ranting doom, gloom, and religious indignation. Mallory and Goodfellow expect he'll be institutionalized rather than imprisoned or hanged.
• Torches and Pitchforks: Almost literally — the mob led by Gillespie to the witches' home marches in brown clothes and carries torches.
• Twisting the Words: Reverend Allsworthy suggests that Bunty shouldn't go to the dinner with the witches because she is innocent and needs to be kept safe. In response, Bunty deliberately misinterprets his words to mean he'll come to the dinner to protect her, and ropes him into it.
• Wild Goose Chase: Mrs. McCarthy sends Bunty out to collect mushrooms from the woods in order to make her wild mushroom soup. In the end, Mrs. M. doesn't even use them — she just wanted to keep Bunty busy and out of trouble. It ends up saving the day.
  • Also lampshaded by name early in the episode when Inspector Mallory and Sergeant Goodfellow are on their way to investigate Goggles Malone's allegations:
    (bird call)
    (Goodfellow, nervously): What was that?!
    (Mallory, dismissively): That sergeant was the sound of a wild goose...