The Vicar of Dibley

The Vicar of Dibley
The Vicar of Dibley Opening titles
Created by	Richard Curtis 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
No. of episodes	20 + 4 comic relief shorts (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	9x30 minutes 7x40 minutes 1x45minutes 1x55minutes 2x60 minutes
Original release
Network	BBC
Release	10 November 1994 – 16 March 2007

The Vicar of Dibley is a British sitcom created by Richard Curtis and written for its lead actress, Dawn French, by Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer, with contributions from Kit Hesketh-Harvey. The Vicar of Dibley aired from 1994 to 2007. In 2004, it came third in Britain's Best Sitcom.

In May 2007, Richard Curtis received a BAFTA 'Academy Fellowship' award for his humanitarian pursuits as well as his creative work including "The Vicar of Dibley".

The Vicar of Dibley is set in a fictional small Oxfordshire village called Dibley, which is assigned a female vicar following the 1994 changes in the Church of England that permitted the ordination of women. The main character was an invention of Richard Curtis, but Dawn French and himself extensively talked with Joy Carroll, one of the first female vicars, and garnished many character traits and informations.

Cast

• Dawn French - The Rev. Geraldine Granger
• Gary Waldhorn - Councillor David Horton
• James Fleet - Hugo Horton
• Emma Chambers - Alice Horton (née Tinker)
• Roger Lloyd Pack - Owen Newitt
• John Bluthal - Frank Pickle
• Trevor Peacock - Jim Trott
• Liz Smith - Letitia Cropley (series 1 to Easter 1996 special)
• Simon McBurney - Cecil (choirmaster) (series 1 to 2004 Christmas special)
• Patricia Kane - Doris Trott (series 1)
• Richard Armitage - Harry Kennedy (2006/07 Christmas specials)

Characters

• Geraldine Kennedy (née Granger) (born 14 November 1964) is the female vicar, self-described as a "babe with a bob cut and a magnificent bosom." She is a bonne vivante and a large, liberal woman who enjoys nothing more than a good laugh, much to the consternation of one David Horton. Her full name was once given as Boadicea Geraldine Granger and later as Geraldine Julie Andrews Dick Van Dyke Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Chim Chiminey Chim Chiminey Chim Chim Cher-ee Granger, the latter due to her mother's favourite book being Mary Poppins and the fact that the film was released the year of Geraldine's birth. But despite her fun-loving and sometimes outrageous behaviour, she is deeply caring and does her best to help those in her parish in any way she can. She is well aware of being overweight but seems to take a relatively laid-back attitude towards it. A self-confessed chocoholic, she often will go on a diet only to break it within a few minutes by eating one of the innumerable chocolate bars that she has hidden throughout her house (even in hollowed-out Bibles). On one occasion, she gives up chocolate for Lent and nearly goes mad. Her unusual first name is revealed late in the series, much to David Horton's amusement, though the name is changed in the final episode. In 2006, she received a proposal from accountant Harry Jasper Kennedy and accepted by running around the village, screaming. In the final episode she marries him in a rather bizarre wedding, dressed in her pyjamas since her wedding dress has been accidentally ruined by Owen Newitt.

• Councillor David Francis Matthew Horton MBE, chairman of the Parish Council, gentleman farmer, pillar of the community and Councillor for Dibley and Whitworth, and main opponent of the female vicar. He is rigid, old-fashioned, efficient, callous and punctual and has never missed a council meeting, In fact, in one episode Jim and Owen reminisce about when David's wife went into labour with Hugo, and David held the meeting in the maternity ward. In later episodes of the series, Horton comes to fall for the Vicar and even proposes to her (she accepts his proposal but later decides to back out of it). He is initially a Conservative, but defects to the Labour Party in 2000 as part of his attempt to persuade Geraldine to marry him. Whether he switches his party allegiance back after she refuses him is unknown. He later supported the Make Poverty History campaign. He is a multi-millionaire.

• Alice Springs Horton (née Tinker) is verger at the church. Blonde and dippy 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 mad mother (who in the last two episodes was said to be in a mental home), and the cousin of David Horton's father. She and Hugo are fond of each other and the vicar plays Cupid successfully in one episode. They eventually marry and have 10 children - the eldest, Geraldine was born on 24 December 1999, in the middle of the village Nativity play in which her parents were playing Mary and Joseph. Accompanying the closing credits for each episode, Geraldine and Alice have a cup of tea while Geraldine tries to tell Alice a joke (frequently the joke is slightly off-colour). Alice never understands the jokes that Geraldine tells her and usually manages to over-analyze the humour completely out of the joke — this continues until the final episode when Harry Kennedy explains the grammar involved and she understands it. Alice believes in the Easter Bunny, Father Christmas and the tooth fairy. After reading The Da Vinci Code she believes herself to be descended from Jesus.

• Hugo Horton is David's somewhat dim-witted son. He served as his father's campaign manager at the October 1994 district council election, but inadvertently wound up going door to door with David's Labour 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". David was never a loving nor affectionate father to Hugo, repressing him and putting down all his life's dreams and ambitions. In one episode, Geraldine mentions that God is a father much like his own father, and Hugo recalls what his father did to him as a child: shouting, insulting him and caning him. When Geraldine corrects him and says she was referring to a loving, caring father, Hugo believed he had another father. Despite this, Hugo still loves his father dearly but stands up to him when it comes to marrying Alice, whom David despises.

• Frank Pickle is the 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". Due to his long boring speech five people, including his parents, have died while he was talking. He decided to declare his homosexuality in a radio broadcast to the village (after over 40 years of being in the closet), but apart from Geraldine, who was with Frank at the time, none of the villagers listened to his broadcast. The next day, he decides to assert his sexuality more openly by wearing a hot pink blazer to work rather than a brown one. Frank also once admitted to fancying Margaret Beckett as well as fellow councilor Owen Newitt, implying that he's bisexual as he is as affected by the naked model in the Dibley Parish Life Art Class as the others and painted the same model in the Landscape class. He defines his ideal man as a 25-year-old South American with an interest in, inter alia, Oxfordshire council procedures.

• 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". This stuttering once led him to lose on Deal or No Deal. His wife Doris 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 commenting on her "lovely arse". He is also openly promiscuous with a penchant for Asian women. In the final episode, he proposed to the vicar, suggesting that he has either divorced his wife, that she has died prior to this episode or is willing to commit bigamy.

• Owen Newitt is the local farmer and a Parish Council member, with a very earthy manner of speaking. He is famous for displaying extremely poor personal hygiene and suffers from chronic problems with his stomach and bowels. He was the first to support the new Vicar's appointment as a lone dissenter, saying that a woman wouldn't be a bad thing since the previous vicar was "a regular old woman anyway", just as David looked set to persuade the other members of the parish council to oppose Geraldine's appointment. 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 (often involving gruesome tales of amputating animals' appendages or otherwise mangling them). 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. Owen spent every Christmas alone from his uncle's death in 1971 until Geraldine joined him for Christmas dinner in 1996 (one of many such invitations she accepted that year).

• Letitia "Letty" Cropley was a Parish Council member. Geraldine once referred to her as "The Queen of Cordon Bleugh" and David Horton called her "The Dibley Poisoner". She was the creator of such revolting "delicacies" as; "Bread and butter pudding surprise" (a recipe for which she was breeding snails), Marmite cakes (which she served for Frank's birthday), chocolate mixed with cod roe, parsnip brownies and chocolate spread sandwiches (with a hint of taramosalata). Letitia only appeared in the first series and the special "The Easter Bunny", in which the character died. Her dying request to Geraldine was that she take over from her as the Easter Bunny, taking chocolate eggs around the village each Easter. Alas it was subsequently discovered that Letitia had made the same request of every member of the parish council.

• Harry Jasper Kennedy is an accountant (described by the vicar as a "towny tosser" prior to meeting him) who proposed marriage to Geraldine in the 2 hour-long 2006/07 Christmas specials. Before he moved to Dibley, Harry lived in a flat in London but decided to move because in his own words, "Lived on the same street in London for 15 whole years, bell never rang once". Prior to moving in with Geraldine, he lived at the "Sleepy Cottage". Harry has a particular fondness for books, loving "the more traditional stuff". His sister Rosie (whom Geraldine believed to be Harry's girlfriend) joined him in Dibley a short while after his arrival. In the untitled Comic Relief Special, aired on 16 March 2007, whilst Sting goes to stay at the vicar's house, Harry goes off to stay with Trudie Styler.

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, two 60-minute episodes were filmed in September 2006, and introduced a new character, Harry Kennedy, whom Geraldine marries. The first episode aired on Christmas Day 2006, the second was on New Year's Day 2007. The Christmas Day episode was watched by 11.4 million, more than any other programme on that day while the New Year's Day episode was watched by 12.3 million people . However, days later it was announced that a short special would be shown for Comic Relief and this, the last ever episode, was aired on 16 March 2007.

Following the opening credits of each episode, there is usually a humorous depiction, eg. a woman knitting straight off the sheep. At the end of each episode, following the closing credits, Geraldine tells a joke to Alice — most of the time, the joke is rather off-colour. Alice usually doesn't get the joke, but instead tries to interpret it literally and then explains to Geraldine why the premise is implausible. In the very first episode, Alice actually does get the joke and bursts into hysterical laughter which lasts long after the joke has outstayed its welcome. In the episode Love and Marriage, David is told the joke and understands it straight away. In the 2005 episode Happy New Year, this joke was told at the beginning as the end of the episode focused on the Make Poverty History campaign. In the final episode, the joke is explained to Alice by Harry, in an ironically complicated manner which the character's intelligence would suggest an inability to understand, allowing her to get the punchline for the first time.

Location

While The Vicar of Dibley is set in Oxfordshire, the village scenes are filmed in Turville in Buckinghamshire, where Midsomer Murders, Goodnight Mister Tom, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Marple have also been filmed. The opening titles were filmed in and around South Buckinghamshire, although the aerial tracking shot shows M40 traffic approaching Oxfordshire through the Chilterns cutting at Stokenchurch Gap.

Theme music

The theme music was composed by Howard Goodall to Psalm 23, and was performed by The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford with George Humphries singing the solo. The conductor was Stephen Darlington. It has been released as a charity single with proceeds to Comic Relief. It also appears on Goodall's CD Choral Works, which also includes his theme for another popular sitcom, Mr. Bean.

The inoffensive nature of the show and its highlighting of the more benign and comforting aspects of religion was memorably parodied on Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round in a regular series of sketches entitled "The Ayatollah Of Dibley". Mr. Sayle has since stated in several interviews that he does not think that after 9/11 the sketches would have been permitted.

DVD releases

File:Vicar of Dibley DVD.jpg

The Complete Collection (R2 DVD)

The Vicar of Dibley was released in DVD in Region 2 (UK) from 2001. In 2002, a DVD entitled The Best of The Vicar of Dibley was released featuring a 90 minute film of Dawn French talking to the producer Jon Plowman with clips from the series. A 2002 documentary narrated by Jo Brand entitled The Real Vicars of Dibley was also on the DVD. In 2005, a boxset of the "complete collection" was released. This included all the then aired episodes and shorts except the 1997 BallyKissDibley Comic Relief short. The final two episodes and 6-disc "ultimate" box set were released on 26 November 2007, neither included the 2007 Comic Relief short.

In Australia (Region 4), almost all episodes of The Vicar of Dibley have been released. In 2005, The Vicar of Dibley: The Divine Collection was released as a DVD boxset. It includes Series One, Two, Three; All specials (excluding the 2004/05/06/07 specials), and the documentary The REAL Vicars of Dibley. All three series have also been released individually. In late 2005 The Vicar of Dibley: The Specials were released. The DVD contains the 2004/05 Christmas/New Years Eve specials, and also contained the 2005 Comic Relief Special Antiques Roadshow. The final two episodes (proper) are expected for release on 16 January 2008, under the DVD A Wholly Holy Happy Ending, and will contain the 2006/07 Christmas/New Year's Specials, as well as the documentary; The Vicar of Dibley Story. There is, however, no news of the final (2007) Comic Relief sketch of the Vicar of Dibley being released on DVD.

In US/Canada (Region 1), all episodes have been released on DVD as of 26 August 2007, except for the two 2006/07 Christmas specials and the 2007 Comic Relief short episode. However, there are plans to release a DVD on 9 October 2007 that will feature the two specials. It is unknown at this time if the Comic Relief special will appear on this DVD.

Vicar Of Dibley, The: The Immaculate Collection has been released and contains all the episodes ever aired on TV.

US version

The idea came about when two co-stars of the extremely successful US sitcom Frasier, Jane Leeves and Peri Gilpin set up their production company Bristol Cities with a US version of The Vicar of Dibley as their first project. On 6 February 2007, FOX announced plans to adapt The Vicar of Dibley into an American sitcom, titled The Minister Of Divine. The series starred Kirstie Alley as a former "Wild Child" who returned to her hometown as its first female minister. The series was not picked up by FOX for its 2007-2008 schedule .

External links

• The Vicar of Dibley at BBC Comedy
• The Vicar of Dibley at British TV Comedy
• The Vicar of Dibley at The British Sitcom Guide