Video: Grantchester: exclusive prequel starring James Norton In the first series of Grantchester, ITV's detective series about a jazz-loving, murder-solving village priest played by James Norton and based on James Runcie's novels, there were suggestions that its leading man had a dark past. Canon Sidney Chambers, the fictional vicar of Grantchester in Fifties England, had fought in the Second World War before following his vocation in the Church of England. After the end of the war, despite living a peaceful life in Cambridgeshire, Sidney suffered flashbacks to his wartime experiences and drank heavily in an apparent attempt to cope with his memories. The life of Sidney Chambers is loosely based on the life of Robert Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who was a tank commander in the Scots Guards during the war. Author James Runcie is his son. Sidney's wartime trauma has been dramatised in a prequel to the TV series, starring James Norton as Sidney in his Army days and available exclusively to the Telegraph to celebrate the release of the first series of Grantchester on DVD. Telegraph critic Michael Pilgrim described Grantchester as "Cluedo with cassocks and just enough noir for the modern palate. Victoria sponge with a tablespoon of battery acid... Stop it, I'm hooked. Sign me up. I'll give you my cat and house to see what happens next. A second series of Grantchester will be shown on ITV in 2015. Grantchester is released on DVD on Monday December 1.