Harry Potter Star Plunges Into Murder Mayhem in Shocking New Trailer for Bestselling Thriller

Channel 5 has dropped the first trailer for Murder Before Evensong, a six-part murder mystery based on Reverend Richard Coles' novel. Yes, that is Matthew Lewis from Harry Potter playing a village rector who suddenly has more to worry about than the church roof.

What the show is

Lewis stars as Canon Daniel Clement, the Rector of the English village of Champton. His life is fairly routine: he shares the rectory with his widowed mother Audrey and two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. Then he floats a plan to modernize the church, the parish promptly splits into camps, and a dead body turns up at the back of the church. So much for a quiet posting.

"As the police move in and the bodies start piling up, Daniel is the only one who can try and keep his fractured community together... and catch a killer."

The trailer tees up that clash of cozy-and-cutthroat pretty clearly: parish politics, small-town secrets, and a rector who ends up sleuthing whether he likes it or not.

Cast you will know (and where you know them from)

• Matthew Lewis as Canon Daniel Clement (Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films; recently in Channel 5's All Creatures Great and Small and the BBC sitcom Avoidance)
• Amanda Redman as Audrey, Daniel's mother
• Amit Shah as DS Neil Vanloo
• Adam James as Bernard De Floures
• Tamzin Outhwaite as Stella Harper

Also appearing: Meghan Treadway, Alexander Delamain, Marion Bailey, Amanda Hadingue, Francis Magee, and Nina Toussaint-White.

About that title

Murder Before Evensong kicks off Reverend Richard Coles' Canon Clement series on TV. If this first run lands, there is plenty more source material waiting: A Death in the Parish (2023), Murder at the Monastery (2024), Murder Under the Mistletoe (2024), and A Death on Location (2025).

When and where to watch

Murder Before Evensong airs on Channel 5 this autumn.