The Vicar of Dibley

The Vicar of Dibley, British television situation comedy that aired on BBC One from 1994 to 2000, with special episodes continuing until 2020. During its run, the show had high viewership and was nominated for several BAFTA awards. It received an International Emmy Award in 1998.

Plot, characters, and cast

The series follows Geraldine Granger, a priest in the Church of England played by Dawn French, as she serves a parish in the rural town of Dibley and tries to win over its residents, who are skeptical of having a female vicar. Besides Geraldine, Dibley is home to Alice Tinker (played by Emma Chambers), a spacey but lovable verger (a church official who serves as an assistant and a caretaker of church property), David Horton (Gary Waldhorn), the town’s wealthy and controlling church council leader, and Hugo Horton (James Fleet), David’s timid son and Alice’s love interest. Other prominent characters include Owen Newitt (Roger Lloyd Pack), Jim Trott (Trevor Peacock), Letitia Cropley (Liz Smith), and Frank Pickle (John Bluthal). One of the running gags of The Vicar of Dibley that closed nearly every episode was Geraldine telling Alice an (often dirty) joke and Alice missing the punchline.

French joined The Vicar of Dibley as a solo venture. She had gained popularity from French and Saunders, a sketch show in which she starred opposite Jennifer Saunders. The Vicar of Dibley was written and produced by Richard Curtis, who had created Mr. Bean with Rowan Atkinson and would write such feature films as Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), and Love Actually (2003). Joy Carroll Wallis, one of the first women to be ordained by the Church of England after it voted to allow women to be ordained as priests, was the inspiration for the show as well as an unofficial adviser to Curtis, French, and the rest of the cast. Producer Peter Bennett-Jones said that Wallis helped French feel more comfortable about playing a pious character, saying, “Joy Carroll made Dawn feel much happier about doing the show because she told Dawn that vicars can drink and eat chocolate and have a sex life.”

Series

The show’s first season, which began airing in November 1994, was followed by two specials in 1996—an Easter special, “The Easter Bunny,” and a Christmas special, “The Christmas Lunch Incident.” The specials were followed by seasons 2 (1997) and 3 (1999), after which the show returned for two-episode runs of Christmas specials in 2004 and 2006 and a New Year’s episode in 2005. The second episode of the 2006 run, where Geraldine marries Harry Kennedy (Richard Armitage), drew 12.3 million viewers. The cast also participated in several specials for the British charity Comic Relief. In 2007 Kirstie Alley starred in an American adaptation of the show in a pilot for Fox titled Minister of the Divine. The show was not picked up for a full season.

Later episodes and criticism

During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, the BBC aired the special “The Vicar of Dibley in Lockdown,” four episodes in which Geraldine shares her sermons with her parishioners on video chat. The cast was limited, as several of the original actors had died. The special was criticized for expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement—an action on the part of the BBC that some viewers considered biased. Despite its large viewership, the show was also disparaged for its humorous take on religion.