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Brief synopsis of the show

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the vicar of dibley guide cast details episodes information sitcom bbc one 1994 2015 vicar of dibley dibley dawn french emma chambers gary waldhorn james fleet john bluthal

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The Vicar Of Dibley - BBC1 Sitcom - British Comedy Guide

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A guide to The Vicar Of Dibley, the 1994 - 2015 BBC One TV sitcom set around a local church.

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B - Clip from Clip from British Sitcom: 60 Years of Laughing at Ourselves

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B - Clip from Clip from British Sitcom: 60 Years of Laughing at Ourselves

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Clip discussing the reasons behind the creation of the show.

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Learning on Screen - The British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council

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News article discussing the potential effect the show had on females.

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Vicar of Dibley effect: more women than men ordained

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More women than men were ordained as clergy in the Church of England last year for the first time since the introduction of women priests in 1994. Church statistics showed that 244 of the 478 clergy ordained in 2006 were women and 234 men

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News article praising the show discussing the postive nature of the comedy towards religion.

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Is it just a case of festive easy-viewing, something for the generations to sit down together in front of, put up their gouty feet and enjoy one last collective giggle before the irritations common to families held at close-quarters start to make themselves felt? Or is this a true comedy classic, re-runs of which we'll be enjoying in 20 years' time?

Peter Fincham, controller of BBC1, modestly put the channel's triumph over ITV down to his "wonderful schedule of programmes that audiences love... which proved an irresistible combination and show that family viewing is alive and well and in excellent health".

Of course, scheduling plays a big part, and doubtless the show's pole primetime position, sandwiched between a milestone EastEnders episode and the promise of Little Britain, helped greatly. As for family viewing, Dibley did indeed deliver something for everyone, offering romance and absurdity in more or less equal measure.

The Rev Geraldine Granger, "always the vicar, never the bride", found love, lost it and then found it again (the conclusion to her romance will be broadcast on New Year's Day) and, along the way, performed a rousing version of Gladys Knight's It Should Have Been Me, which is bound to feature in any future line-up of Best Ever Comedy Moments.

Meanwhile, the verger Alice displayed new depths of dim-wittedness after an encounter with "that new book of the Bible - The Da Vinci Code", and meekly accepting an exasperated Geraldine's instruction to go search for Narnia as she locked her in a wardrobe. The episode finished with a rather rude joke about pencils and accountants' bottoms - with luck Grandmother may have dozed off for that last one.

Of course, this wasn't a one-off rating's success. The show's enduring popularity goes deeper than that. It has been pulling in big audiences on and off since 1994, thanks largely to the sure hand of writer/creator Richard Curtis who, despite moving into a rather bigger league with such films as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, has always found time to return to one of his favourite characters. In a recent interview for Radio Times, he attributed much of the show's success to Dawn French's performance as Geraldine.

"It's pretty clear she's always been the heart and soul of the show. Geraldine had to be very funny but also a very good person -- and that's a tricky combination."

In a nationwide viewers' poll for the television series Britain's Best Sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley surprised many by roundly beating such perennial favourites as Dad's Army, Porridge and even the critically revered Fawlty Towers for third place (behind Only Fools and Horses and Blackadder - another Curtis co-write). And this despite the handicap of having the less than cool Carol Vorderman as the show's advocate.

In her thesis for its supremacy, Vorderman argued that "The Vicar of Dibley stands alone in that at its heart it's about the struggle to be good, to be tolerant and patient and still be funny... and that's not easy. But it never gets overly sentimental. There's a dash of whisky in the bedtime drink, a suspender belt under the cassock. Geraldine Granger is a fantastic comic creation - and she's played by one of the greatest comic actors Britain has ever produced."

All good points, with the definite exception of the one about sentimentality. Dibley can get decidedly treacly in places. But Vorderman went rather more astray when she suggested that the show, in its early years at least, was "a cutting-edge social satire". Nothing could be farther from the truth - it may have introduced, even humanised the idea of women priests at a time when their ordination was still controversial, but the intent was hardly serious.

Unlike, say, Little Britain, there is nothing remotely cool about The Vicar of Dibley and there never has been. In fact, you'd be hard pushed to find its loyal fans or even anyone under the age of 50 who will happily admit to watching it. But what it does have is all the elements of the classic situation comedy that have worked over the years, be it written in the British style by one or two writers - Curtis, or Marks & Gran for example - or American style by a team of executive writers pumping out episodes of such classics as Frasier or Friends from a high-tech suite somewhere near Los Angeles.

At the core of any successful comedy is a strong cast of diverse, often hackneyed characters: add to Dibley's female vicar a village idiot in the form of Alice and her nice-but-dim husband Hugo, who in turn is linked (son of) to the sharp buisnessman/squire of the manor David, mix with a couple of strong personalities and the stage is set for all sorts of classic comedic goings on. In the case of Dibley, it's a very middle-class stage.

In fact The Vicar of Dibley is a quintessentially English comedy that speaks to old, conservative middle-class values in an unscarily contemporary way. It follows in a long line of village-based situation comedies (from Last of the Summer Wine to Dad's Army and Open All Hours) that pokes fun at the curious mix of social intensity and tolerance of life in small, often rural communities while, at the same time, clearly insisting that this way of life is to be cherished as among the best that anyone in this country could aspire to.

Above all though, Dibley represents an asbo-free world where really bad things never happen and kind people co-exist in harmony, disrupted only by misunderstanding and mind-boggling stupidity; where people don't feel the need to abandon centuries of tradition, just because of a clergyperson's sex, or even sexuality. Could there be a better place to spend Christmas?

*Gerard O'Donovan is a television critic

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Is it just a case of festive easy-viewing, something for the generations to sit down together in front of, put up their gouty feet and enjoy one last collective giggle before the irritations common to families held at close-quarters start to make themselves felt?

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Article discussing the potential offensive nature of the sh

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The BBC's chief faith adviser has criticised its attitude to religion, picking out shows such as The Vicar of Dibley as being even more offensive to Christians than the recent broadcast of Jerry Springer - The Opera, which caused 50,000 complaints.

The Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, who heads the multi-faith Central Religious Advisory Committee set up to guide the BBC and regulators, also complained that the body had not been consulted over several recent controversies.

As well as the furore over Springer, the BBC has also pulled an animation called Popetown, and the media regulator Ofcom has allowed ITV to halve its religious output, axing My Favourite Hymns.

In an interview with Media Guardian, the bishop said that the BBC should do more to consider religious sensibilities across the schedule, picking out the Christmas edition of Vicar of Dibley as particularly offensive. "I thought the initial series very good," he said. But he went on: "I thought the last Christmas Day edition more seriously offensive than Jerry Springer. The jokes about Jesus were in pretty poor taste and the drunken performances at midnight mass lost touch with reality."

Bishop James said that a "western liberal secular mindset" dominated the media; broadcasters in general, and the BBC in particular, should do more to engage with all religions. "Religion is one of the great phenomena of the world for millions and millions, and yet people represent religious broadcasting as dull"

He also criticised Ofcom, which in its public service broadcasting review paved the way for the ITV cutback. "I think there were some quite unsophisticated questions about whether people valued religious broadcasting," said Bishop James. "It is not fashionable to say you like religious broadcasting, yet ... the truth is that far from falling, religions are resurgent."

The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, said this month he wanted to do more to address Christianity in innovative ways. Ofcom and the BBC governors have yet to respond to 50,000 complaints of blasphemy made in a campaign against Jerry Springer - The Opera, on BBC2.
Topics

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Vicar of Dibley 'worse than Springer opera'

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The BBC's chief faith adviser has criticised its attitude to religion, picking out shows such as The Vicar of Dibley as being even more offensive to Christians than the recent broadcast of Jerry Springer - The Opera, which caused 50,000 complaints.

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Report discussing the ethnic issues that many British TV shows have including The Vicar of Dibley when it comes to ethnicity

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Placing too much emphasis on diversity in television has one big drawback: it doesn't generally make for very good television.

In Channel 4's new market research, The Vicar of Dibley was criticised by viewers from ethnic minorities because its main characters are all white. What the survey didn't ask was whether those viewers found Dawn French funny.

We have welcomed non-white faces to our TV screens. Leona Lewis won The X-Factor, and Botswana-set drama The No1 Ladies' Detective Agency pulled in big ratings. These, however, were good programmes.

Sadly, Trevor Phillips's sentiment that there are too few senior television executives from ethnic minorities rings true - and, of course, all of British society should be properly represented on screen.

But one area of British television that shows no diversity at all is Channel 4's corporate purpose.

Earlier this year, chief executive Andy Duncan set out in black and white his unshakable intent to get £150 million a year in subsidy out of the government.

If C4 are honest about it, the announcement was intended for culture secretary Andy Burnham - not for anyone in Bradford or Burnley.

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Analysis: Trevor Phillips' assessment that British television is 'too white'

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Placing too much emphasis on diversity in television has one big drawback: it doesn't generally make for very good television. In Channel 4's new market research, The Vicar of Dibley was criticised by viewers from ethnic minorities because its main characters are all white.

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Press cutting after the shows original run ended discussing audience reaction.

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This is your gateway to over TWO million pages of the 20th Century's biggest-selling newspapers, from 1900 to today, all as published on the day they were published and all searchable by name, word or phrase.

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Ofcom bulletin discussing complaints over an episode of the show and whether action needed to be taken due to these complaints.

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BBC Trust report looking at whether an episode of The Vicar of Dibley breached the BBC's values when it comes to being unbiased over political issues.