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Father Brown Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
13 Episodes 1974 - 1974
Episode 1
The Hammer of God
52 mins
Lord of the manor Colonel James Bohun, a sadistic bully and chauvinistic womanizer, is despised in his small English village. Despite being married, he openly flaunts his conquests and shows only disdain for the beliefs of his brother, the local Anglican vicar. When he is found in the churchyard with his skull smashed by a single blow from a blacksmith's hammer, Father Brown, a guest of the vicar's, brings his sleuthing skills to the case.
Episode 2
The Oracle of the Dog
51 mins
Lord of the manor Colonel Druce is unhappy with his son for his late night drinking and carousing and his daughter for her choice of a French doctor as fiancé. He summons his lawyer and changes his will, only to be stabbed to death shortly thereafter in the estate's summer house. House guest Father Brown helps to track down his late host's killer.
Episode 3
The Curse of the Golden Cross
52 mins
When Professor Gerald Smaill, an American archaeologist, discovers a golden Byzantine cross in cave in Asia Minor, a disembodied voice threatens him with death. While en route on a cruise ship back to England, he receives additional threats and confides in fellow passenger Father Brown. A secret crypt under a Dover Church has been recently uncovered containing the body of a 13th Century bishop that has been mummified in the Egyptian fashion along with a similar golden cross. Smaill, Brown, and several of the ship's passengers investigate the find and risk the curse that accompanies it.
Episode 4
The Eye of Apollo
51 mins
Aging, blind dowager Miss Dorothy Ammersly, an advocate of equality for women in the workplace, has consigned her fortune to her niece, successful businesswoman Pauline Stacey. Stacey is not as astute when it comes to judging character and has fallen under the spell of Kalon, an ex-convict who has reinvented himself as the high priest to Apollo, the sun god. Stacy makes out her will, ignoring her sister and naming him as her sole heir. Although Stacey falls to her death down an elevator shaft in close proximity to Kalon, the charlatan has an impeccable alibi witness, Father Brown.
Episode 5
The Three Tools of Death
52 mins
Scottish noble Sir Aaron Armstrong is a reformed alcoholic who advocates temperance and hires dipsomaniac Patrick Royce as his secretary on condition he give up drink. When Armstrong finds out that Royce and his daughter are planning to get married, he ignores Royce's fifteen months of sobriety and discharges him. Soon after, Armstrong is found with a broken neck outside a high window on his estate, the apparent victim of foul play. Father Brown assists Inspector Gilder in uncovering the facts of the case.
Episode 6
The Mirror of the Magistrate
52 mins
Sir Arthur Travers, a brilliant conservative jurist known for his controversial views, is found murdered by gunshot in the garden of his estate. Because he was murdered outdoors, the police cannot explain how an indoor mirror in his house came to be shattered. Osric Orm, a Fabian Socialist known for his radical views, is charged with the crime, but Father Brown instinctively believes him innocent and sets out to find the real killer.
Episode 7
The Dagger with Wings
52 mins
Wealthy Essex landowner Augustus Aylmer confesses to Father Brown that fear of his impending death has caused him to dabble in the occult, enabled by John Strake, his adopted son. Aylmer had made Strake his heir because he feels his natural sons aren't needy, but ultimately realizes his error and disinherits the necromancer. When two of his sons die under unusual circumstances, Brown suspects foul play.
Episode 8
The Actor and the Alibi
51 mins
Mundon Mandeville runs a thoroughly disliked repertoire theater company and is murdered inside a windowless room in the building although everyone involved has an alibi. Brown is there as a favor to Flambeau in order to talk an underage seventeen year-old into returning home to her worried parents who don't realize she has lied about her age in order to follow her career as an aspiring actress.
Episode 9
The Quick One
51 mins
Cantankerous John Raggley, a xenophobic crank inclined to writing letters of complaint and constricting the freedom of his pretty spinster daughter, is found in the bar of a local hotel with a knife in his back, but because there is no blood in the wound, Brown, along with Flambeau, is a hotel guest and correctly deduces he was already dead when he was stabbed.
Episode 10
The Man with Two Beards
51 mins
Father Brown is staying with an old friend, a retired jewel thief who retired to a career of beekeeping in the country. Someone has been using his m.o. to commit a rash of local robberies, and when he is found shot, the local police inspector assumes he had returned to his former profession. Father Brown sets about clearing his name.
Episode 11
The Head of Caesar
51 mins
Christabel Carstairs has inherited the estate of her well-to-do late father with the exception of his celebrated collection of Ancient Roman coins, which go to her elder brother.. As an art student she becomes infatuated with a male model and impulsively steals a coin from the collection because she thinks its likeness of Augustus Caesar Augustus resembles the young man in question. When a blackmailer tries to coerce money from her to keep the theft secret, she tuns to Flambeau and Father Brown for help.
Episode 12
The Arrow of Heaven
51 mins
A paranoid millionaire becomes obsessed with a priceless early Christian chalice and wins it at auction. He lives with it in an impervious citadel, but is killed by an arrow in the neck. The irrepressible Father Brown must sift through a plethora of red herrings to find the killer and his/her motive.
Episode 13
The Secret Garden
51 mins
Father Brown is staying at a beautiful French mansion with an assortment of red herrings when a decapitated body is discovered in its enclosed, inaccessible garden. Father Brown sorts through a variety of clues including some puzzling twigs near he body despite its distance from any trees, he fact that the structure has only one exterior door, and the fact that the body apparently was struck after the head was severed.
