The Vicar of Dibley

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The Vicar of Dibley
The Complete Collection (R2 DVD)
Genre	Sitcom
Running time	Varied between 30 minutes, 40 minutes and 45 minutes
Creator(s)	Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer
Starring	Dawn French Gary Waldhorn James Fleet John Bluthal Liz Smith Trevor Peacock Roger Lloyd Pack Emma Chambers
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original channel	BBC
Original run	10 November 1994–Present
No. of episodes	18 + 3 shorts to date (List of episodes)

The Vicar of Dibley is a British sitcom created by Richard Curtis, and mostly written by Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer. The show was written for its title actor, Dawn French.

The sitcom is about a small fictional English village called Dibley that gets a female vicar (set after the real-life change in Church of England law allowing the ordination of women). It is a comedic study of the effect that this has on a small rural community. The Vicar of Dibley came third in a 2004 BBC poll to find 'Britain's Best Sitcom'.

In November 2005 BBC released a DVD boxset of the entire collection, including the 2004 Christmas specials and the 2005 Comic Relief special. However, the BallyKissDibley short sketch for Comic Relief was not included (although the 1999 and 2005 specials were).

1 Cast
2 Characters
3 Episodes
4 Location
5 Theme music
6 Running gags
7 Critical reaction
8 DVD releases
9 External links

[edit] Cast

Dawn French - The Rev. Geraldine Granger
Gary Waldhorn - Councillor David Horton
James Fleet - Hugo Horton
Emma Chambers - Alice Horton (nee Tinker)
Roger Lloyd Pack - Owen Newitt
John Bluthal - Frank Pickle
Trevor Peacock - Jim Trott
Liz Smith - Letitia Cropley (series 1 to Easter 1996 special)

[edit] Characters

[edit] Geraldine Granger

Geraldine's full name is Boadicea Geraldine Granger, but is always lnown as as Geraldine. The female vicar, self-described as a bon-vivant. The vicar is a liberal woman who enjoys nothing more than a good laugh, much to the consternation of one David Horton. But despite her fun-loving and sometimes outrageous behaviour, she is incredibly caring and does her best to help those in her parish in any way she can. She is well aware of her weight, but doesn't seem to care. Also a professed chocoholic, she often will go on a diet only to break it within a few minutes by eating one of her innumerable chocolate bars hidden throughout the house. As such, she gave up chocolate for Lent and nearly went mad. Her unusual first name was revealed late in the series, much to David Horton's amusement.

[edit] David Horton

Councillor David Horton MBE, Conservative chairman of the Parish Council, gentleman farmer, pillar of the community and local councillor, played by Gary Waldhorn, and main opponent of the female vicar. In later episodes of the series, Horton comes to fall for the Vicar and even proposes to her (she accepted his proposal but later decided to withdraw).

[edit] Alice Horton

Alice Springs Horton (nee Tinker) is verger at the church, blonde and ditzy, played by Emma Chambers. Alice is the only main character who does not sit on the Parish Council. She is the product of a one-night stand between her mother and the cousin of her father-in-law's dad. She and Hugo are fond of each other and the vicar plays cupid successfully in one episode. They eventually marry and have a daughter Geraldine, and many other children. One running gag about Alice at the end of each episode involved Geraldine telling Alice a joke (What do you get if you eat too many Christmas Decorations? Tinsilitis!), which Alice proves unable to understand (going off, in this case, about the ravages of the disease).

[edit] Hugo Horton

Hugo Horton is David's somewhat dim-witted son,He served as his father's campaign manager one election year – but inadvertently wound up going door to door with the opponent, delivering adverts and making introductions for him. Hugo and Alice Tinker are always shown to have feelings for each other, but they do not get together as a couple until Geraldine plays Cupid in "Engagement".

[edit] Frank Pickle

Frank Pickle is likeable, but boring and pedantic secretary to the Parish Council. He is so boring that nobody wants to listen to him — even when he wants to discuss something exciting (to his own mind) such as the time he went down to the pub "and they'd completely run out of crisps" or "the time when the milkman was 47 minutes late". He decided to confess, on radio, about his homosexuality to the village after 20 years of staying in the closet, but, apart from Geraldine (who was with Frank at the time), none of the other villagers listened to his broadcast — so they still do not know.

[edit] Jim Trott

Jim Trott is a Parish Council member, who has an idiosyncratic way of saying "no no no no no..." before almost everything he says, most of all "yes". His wife does the opposite, saying "yes yes yes yes yes ...". Jim was a good dancer, though a long-winded singer. Despite his marriage, he still has no qualms about joining Owen in flirting with the Vicar. Frequently comments about her "lovely arse."

[edit] Owen Newitt

Owen Newitt is the local farmer and a Parish Council member, with a very earthy manner of speaking. He was the first to support the new Vicar's appointment, saying that a woman wouldn't be a bad thing since the previous vicar was "a regular old woman anyway". His signature running gag was that he was chronically late for the Parish Council meetings, and had humorously legitimate, if graphic, reasons for his delays. He proposed to the vicar in "Engagement". She rejected him, but he was not upset, having found she was a drinker. Despite this, he frequently makes several crude attempts to flirt with her, though they are all comically misguided.

[edit] Letitia Cropley

Letitia "Letty" Cropley was a Parish Council member and creator of such revolting 'delicacies' as 'bread and butter pudding surprise' (a recipe for which she was breeding snails), not to mention marmite cakes (which she served for Frank's birthday) and chocolate mixed with cod roe, Letitia only appeared in the first series and the special "The Easter Bunny", in which the character died.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of The Vicar of Dibley episodes

'The Vicar of Dibley first aired on 10 November 1994. After 18 episodes and 3 short specials, Dawn French told Davina McCall on BBC One chat show Davina on 29 March 2006 that she did not think there would be any more series. However, she said that more Christmas Specials were in the works for the end of the year. This news was confirmed on 6 July 2006 by Richard Curtis, however it came with the news that the series was coming to an end. The two 60 minute episodes were filmed in September 2006, and a statement released by the show's makers explained that the episodes will introduce a new character, to be played by Richard Armitage, who Geraldine will marry.

[edit] Location

In the show, Dibley is said to be located in Oxfordshire; however, real places are mentioned such as High Wycombe and Princes Risborough, both of which are in Buckinghamshire. The outdoor scenes of the show are filmed in the village of Turville, which is also in Buckinghamshire, and all the scenes that feature in the opening titles are in and around South Buckinghamshire, although the aerial tracking shot shows M40 traffic approaching Oxfordshire through the Chilterns cutting at Stokenchurch Gap.

The village of Turville has also been used for many other programmes and films such as numerous episodes of Midsomer Murders, the adaptation of Goodnight Mister Tom, and more recently, a Miss Marple episode.

[edit] Theme music

The theme music was composed by Howard Goodall to Psalm 23, and was performed by 'George and the Choir' (The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford). The conductor is Stephen Darlington. It was released as a charity single with proceeds to Comic Relief.

[edit] Running gags

Following the closing theme music and credits, Geraldine was shown telling a joke (usually off-colour) to Alice, which, rather than laughter, would elicit a literal translation from Alice; she would go on to explain to Geraldine in great detail why the premise of her joke was implausible. At the end of the series, Geraldine simply beat Alice over the head with a bible when she did this, with the rationale that someone had to do it at some point. There is one exception to this running, which is on the episode Happy New Year (first aired New Year's Day 2005, the second of the 2004 Christmas specials), where the joke is at the start of the episode (as the end shows the Make Poverty History campaign and it was thought a joke would not be suitable). One episode has Geraldine telling the joke to David, who gets it straight away.

Also, at the end of the opening theme music in most episodes, there is usually a humorous depiction, eg. a woman knitting straight off the sheep.

[edit] Critical reaction

Although it was commended for raising the issue of women priests, the show has been criticised for taking to extremes the worst stereotypes of rural communities and for showing people living in rural communities as being less intelligent. At least initially, some viewers found Geraldine's light-hearted approach to her vocation to be bordering on blasphemous. But while certainly bawdy, her theology is quite orthodox, believing that Jesus is the Son of God and that the biblical miracles occurred.

The presentation of a church-oriented parish council (in reality, a part of civil local government) seems to owe more to the nature of a Church of England parochial church council.

[edit] DVD releases

In November 2005, the BBC released a DVD boxset of the entire collection, including the 2004 Christmas specials and the 2005 Comic Relief special. However, the BallyKissDibley short sketch for Comic Relief was not included (although the 1999 and 2005 specials were).