Customer Reviews

The Vicar of Dibley - The Divine Collection

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Between 1994 and 1999, the BBC produced a hilarious television series called "The Vicar of Dibley" starring the well-known Dawn French. The plot of the series was that the small English farming village of Dibley needed a new vicar after its 102-year old vicar (played by Preston Lockwood, 1912-1996) passed away. To the surprise of many village residents, their new vicar is a boisterous woman by the name of Geraldine Granger (Dawn French). One villager in particular, the wealthy David Horton (Gary Waldhorn), is especially not pleased with the situation, but over time, his opinion changes. David and several of Dibley's more eccentric residents regularly meet to discuss various issues addressing Dibley. These villagers include David's son Hugo (James Fleet), their secretary Frank Pickle (John Bluthal), the farmer Owen Newitt (Roger Lloyd-Pack) and the stuttering Jim Trott (Trevor Peacock). Until her character passed away during an Easter special (following the show's first season), the village meetings also included Dibley's most experimental cook, Letitia Cropley (Liz Smith). Upon becoming Dibley's vicar, Geraldine is treated to having her own scatter-brained assistant, Alice Tinker (Emma Chambers).

The first season of "The Vicar of Dibley" aired in 1994 with 6 episodes. Three 40+ minute specials followed in 1996 & 1997, as well as one 11-minute special, before the second season aired in 1998 with three episodes. The third (and final) season of 4 episodes aired in 1999. The three-disk DVD collection of the series contains the 16 regular length episodes and specials, but not the 11-minute special from 1997. These episodes and specials (with my rating for each) are listed below:

Disk 1:

1. "Arrival" (5+). Dibley's aging vicar passes away, and Geraldine Granger arrives to take his place.
2. "Songs of Praise" (5+). A BBC TV program wants to feature a show about Dibley's new female vicar, and Geraldine decides to have auditions for church choir.
3. "Community Spirit" (5). Geraldine promises a huge Autumn Fair turnout thinking that she can get Elton John to appear thanks to Alice, but Kylie Minogue arrives instead.
4. "The Window and the Weather" (5). A wind storm causes a tree to fall through the church's stained-glass window.
5. "Elections" (5). Geraldine and David clash over bus service to Dibley and becomes his unintentional opponent in the race.
6. "Animals" (5+). To David's disapproval, Geraldine holds an animal church service.

Disk 2:

1. "The Easter Bunny" (5+). Letitia passes away and bequeaths her Easter Bunny duties.
2. "The Christmas Lunch Incident" (5+). Geraldine gets talked into several filling Christmas lunches.
3. "Engagement" (5). Alice and Hugo get engaged with a little help from Geraldine.
4. "Dibley Live". Geraldine is in charge of "Radio Dibley" that exists for only one week and is live.
5. "Celebrity Vicar" (5). Geraldine appears on a TV show and becomes a celebrity.
6. "Love and Marriage" (5+). Geraldine presides over Hugo and Alice's wedding and meets David's brother Simon (Clive Mantle).

Disk 3:

1. "Autumn" (5). Geraldine finally gets to spend time with Simon and Alice is pregnant.
2. "Winter" (5). Geraldine is in charge of Dibley's annual nativity reenactment.
3. "Spring" (4.5). Alice & Hugo's daughter who they named after Geraldine is baptized.
4. "Summer" (3). Dibley struggles through a hot drought and the water board wants to turn Dibley into a reservoir.

Overall, I rate "The Vicar of Dibley" with 5 out of 5 stars. The vast majority of the shows are very good, with the exception of the final episode that didn't seem as well written.

THE VICAR OF DIBLEY series must be seen if for no other reason than for the delightful eccentricity of its characters. It played on the British telly from 1994-2000.

As the first episode opens, the aged male vicar of the St. Barnabus Anglican church in the small, rural, village of Dibley dies during Sunday service. The parish council, chaired by the sensible and straight-laced landed gent David Horton (Gary Waldhorn), requests a new vicar from the local bishop. Much to the council's surprise, who should be assigned but the Rev. Geraldine Grainger (Dawn French). On her arrival by cab in the midst of a rainstorm, Geraldine, a young, single, full-figured woman, stuns Horton by saying, "I'll bet you weren't expecting a woman. Or someone with these" - while gesturing to her ample bosom.

Thus, Grainger invades the Dibley community. And, as Horton later - much later after many differences of opinion - admits, she's the best vicar the parish has ever had.

The strength of the series is in the supporting roles. There's squire Horton, of course, driven to frequent bemusement and exasperation by Geraldine and his council members. These include his own dim-witted son, Hugo (James Fleet), who's in love with the mentally challenged parish verger, Alice Tinker (Emma Chambers), who has the intellectual capacity of a brick. Then, there's Jim Trott (Trevor Peacock), who has the nervous habit of prefacing any statement with "No, no ... no, no, no." (During one episode, the viewer is introduced to Mrs. Trott, whose foible is the opposite: "Yes, yes ... yes, yes, yes". But she's never seen again.) There's Frank Pickle (John Bluthal), the council secretary who records the minutes in infuriatingly compulsive detail, and Owen Nesbitt (Roger Lloyd Pack), the profane and blunt-speaking farmer who develops a lust for Geraldine. Finally, there's Letitia Cropley (Liz Smith), killed off in the 1996 Easter special, who has a penchant for experimenting with the most bizarre food recipes, which she trys out on her hapless council colleagues.

Filmed in the quaint hamlet of Turville, just off the M40 about 20 miles west from its junction with the M25 Ring, THE VICAR OF DIBLEY is consistently amusing. For me, the funniest episodes were: "The Easter Bunny" (disc 2), wherein each member of the parish council must decide what to give up for Lent, which, for Geraldine is chocolate; "The Christmas Lunch Incident" (disc 2), wherein Geraldine bites off more than she can chew, literally, by rashly accepting several Christmas lunch invitations; "Autumn" (disc 3), wherein Geraldine is seduced and abandoned by David Horton's hunky brother Simon. And, there are a couple of celebrity guests in brief appearances: Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and Johnny Depp. You know, the Duchess is a Babe.

I can't award five stars because there are a couple of clunker episodes. But, on the whole, THE VICAR OF DIBLEY is top drawer British comedy, and certainly superior to the ubiquitous garbage sitcoms on American TV nowadays.

"The Vicar of Dibley" is one of my all-time favorite Britcoms. It centers around the arrival of a new vicar to the small town of Dibley. Unlike the previous frail & elderly head of their congregation, the people of Dibley are treated to a fun, buxom, invigorating younger woman named Geraldine Granger (played wonderfully by the always funny Dawn French). Gary Waldhorn stars as David Horton, head of the town council, and all-around dissenter to Geraldine's enthusiastic and modern approach to the church. Over the course of the first season, David starts to warm up to the new vicar, and things really start to click.

Two things which are needed to make a successful comedy are the right actors and the right script, and "Vicar of Dibley" has both in abundance. Richard Curtis & Paul Mayhew-Archer have created some of the most unique and funny characters to ever grace a television screen. These characters are in-turn portrayed by a great group of actors, most notably Emma Chambers as Alice Tinker, and Roger Lloyd-Pack as Owen Newitt. But they are just my personal favorites. The others are great, as well.

The humor of this fantastic Britcom is rather bawdy and broad. It has its own cozy charm, due in part to its village setting, quaint characters, and episodes dealing with nice holiday dinners, but this is not cozy along the lines of "As Time Goes By" or even "Good Neighbors". If you're more a fan of the slower-paced, gentler Britcoms, then this may not be your cup of tea. Personally, however, I think it a perfect blend of both broad and gentle humor.

At a short and sweet length of 16 episodes, the show knew when to quit (although I'm not a huge fan of the last episode). Over the course of the series we get to see the vicar arrive in Dibley, overcome the initial hostility of the townfolk, to eventually become welcomed and accepted, by the community and its endearing inhabitants. There are marriages, celebrities, romances, and babies. All of these things are handled with a deft comedic touch, and it helps to make "The Vicar of Dibley" one of best Britcoms ever.

Vicar of Dibley - The Divine Collection was worth the wait. To those who have not seen this series, it can be irreverent and naughty about the Anglican Church, but never vulgar and very poignant and even sweet. And funny, really funny; it borders on the Pythonesque, not that dry British humor. Dawn French (along with Jennifer Saunders, AbFab) have set the standard for female lead BritComs; the cast of characters in this series are smartly written and terribly funny; local folk whose simple ways are both charming and hilarious. My favorite episodes are the Easter Bunny and the Dibley Talent Show. Recommended for those addicted to BritComs, but even if you're not, if you can handle "Are You Being Served?", then this series will be a "Joyous Praise! Hallelujah!"

Geraldine Granger, played with zany inspiration by Dawn French, is everything Dibley convention dictates its village pastor should not be: boisterous, profane, irreverent, caustic, unabashedly libidinous, hopelessly unable to pass up a meal or a drink, and . . . female. And she is all these things with such relish and verve that it takes the villagers a while to understand that she is also everything a good pastor should be: kind, caring, patient, and -- while occasionally wilfully confused about the letter of dogma -- infinitely suffused with the spirit of Christ's message.

This delightful series follows the dawning of awareness in the villagers of just what a treasure landed in their midst. And it's all made endlessly funny because the dawning of any awareness about anything in this collection of oddball villagers must surely involve the hand of God. No unassisted mortal could possibly break through the fog of misapprehension and unintended hijinks in which these villagers -- whom one suspects can be accounted for only by a sustained tradition of inbreeding -- live their lives.

While this series is perhaps a bit more uneven in quality from episode to episode than such Britcom classics as "To the Manor Born" or "Coupling", it never really flags. But when it is at its best, it's a towering pinnacle of comedy. If you don't die laughing when Alice, the vicar's imperturbably clueless assistant, confuses the antique script "s" with an "f" in her scriptural reading one Sunday morning, you're probably already dead. And when Owen, the farmer whose spare time is best not inquired into, evinces an ability at the annual nativity celebration to differentiate the physical attractions of one ewe from another, you just pray through tears of laughter that the whole story doesn't come out.

Never have I seen such an overtly irreverent telling of a tale of ultimate humaneness and love. As our means of public expression have coarsened in recent decades, as it has become harder to hold a television audience without resort to sexual innuendo and titillating storylines, it has become harder to tell stories of gentle spirituality. In successfully enlisting the vulgarity of modern television discourse to tell such an old-fashioned tale, "The Vicar of Dibley" pulls off quite a feat.

I will be the first to announce this here. I have a growing list of films that I have seen this year (ranging from the early 1920s to present) that I have ranked among my favorites that I have seen. While most do a list of what was released this year, I go beyond that because I see more than what is just released at the theaters. While I have consistently kept to just cinematic releases for this list, I believe with this series, The Vicar of Dibley, I am going to make an exception. This was, in my opinion, one of the funniest, cleverest, poignant, and original series that I have ever witnessed. While I am a huge fan of Scrubs, Family Guy, and the very underrated Arrested Development, this BBC released series takes the cake. Up until the final episode (which seemed forced and very strange), this series was chock full of some of the best one-liners imaginable on television. Each episode will continue to impress you, continue to make you laugh, and honestly make you dream that you lived in a community like Dibley. It is a feat that many modern, American, television shows fail to accomplish.

Big businesses, aka "corporations", are slowly turning the small individual communities into a suburbia frenzy. With shows like Friends and Everyone Loves Raymond, you see this mythological world where no bills need to be paid, everyone looks perfect, and jobs seem like a thing of the past. It creates this false sense of security, this idea that you need to live in a GAP world to be truly happy. Finally, there is a series that gives you hope that without the fancy clothing, without the fast cars, with just the simplicity of your neighbor, you can live a very meaningful life. Perhaps I am searching too deeply into this series, but The Vicar of Dibley gave me this newfound appreciation for the unique in my community. To witness a bunch of literal, bumbling stooges, run a facet of the Church's organization made me laugh constantly. Not only was writer Richard Curtis attempting to bring to view the idea of women at the pulpit, but also I believe that he was also taking a slow stab at local governments and their idiosyncratic ways. After watching this series, I miss the closeness that my small town used to have before the influx of mini-malls, multiplexes, and those horrid payday lenders. I wish I could live in Dibley, be a part of this nurturing community, and finally find piece in a non-commercial induced world.

Overall, this is one of the best programs that television has to offer. I suggest to everyone reading this review to run, never walk, to your nearest family-owned store to pick yourself up a copy of The Vicar of Dibley. The unique character development, the insanity of every situation (which bring about buckets of laughter), and the bond that these characters have cannot be seen in any other television series currently out there. The jokes are fresh and smart. There is not an outpouring of physical humor that you can see in nearly every pre-teen film released today. It is witty, charming, and (not to sound too repetitive) THE BEST television shows EVER! I do not think that I am speaking hastily, but honestly. I have never been ready to re-watch a series again as I have this one. So, join me, the Vicar, David & Hugo, Alice, Owen, Frank, and Jim on a wild ride. Should you watch this television series more than once...

"No no no no no no no no no no no no no no ... yes!"

Grade: ***** out of *****

I was so excited to see that the entire collection of Vicar of Dibley is slated for DVD. If you have not seen this Brit sitcom, you must. It is hilarious and at times quite moving. And there is always the joke at the end, which in the words of Owen Newitt "Wait for it, wait for it", is always an good closer for a grand show.

So much about this series is fantastic. The cast is superlative starting with the Dawn French as Geraldine Granger. She presides over a parish board which is always on the verge of anarchy, yet often under the thumb of the local landowner, David Horton. Farmer Owen Newitt (who drops conversation stoppers about his bowels and delivering livestock), Jim ("No, No, No, No,- YES"), Leticia Cropley (bon vivant cook who raids the medicine cabinet for missing ingredients), Hugo Horton (thick son of David), pedantic Frank and the inimitable verger Alice (even thicker than Hugo) make up the parish board with gusto and great humor.

Favorite episodes inclue the Christmas dinner in which Geraldine is forced to eat 4 meals, the church fete with Reg Dwight making a special appearance, the Brain of Dibley, and the Ballet episode. Watch and enjoy the antics of Dibley and its inahbitanta, a little out of step from the real world.

What can I say but brilliant. I am a UK resident and have had to buy them from the USA because you cannot buy the complete series here (silly really as they are british made lol) There is no point telling you what is on the DVD's as its written in previous reviews but rest assured you will buying perfect british comedy in its own right!!!

This is definitely quality material, well worth the investment of money and time. To those who are considering just buying one of the DVDs, I would suggest that you'll probably enjoy that one enough that you'll want the others as well, so you might as well buy the complete set.

Dawn French leads a talented and funny cast, and this is well written TV comedy. It's charmingly evocative of both the English pastoral countryside and the small church environment. Even those familiar only with the American small church experience will find plenty to make them smile in recognition, which is the charm of this whole series: while there is plenty of silliness and some really good laughs, it never goes for the cynical jugular, nor does it make snide statements putting down the church or church people. The stereotypes are here, but they're not here to get eviscerated, just a gentle ribbing. For Anglophiles, church folks, and people who like smart comedy, this collection really is pretty close to divine.

(Just one word of caution: the humor is usually spot on, but not necessarily appropriate for the whole family, particularly given the differences between what's considered "appropriate" in the US and the UK. Parents will want to watch it once before showing it to the kids. Trust me....)

Being a long tome lover of the British comedy series, The Vicar of Dibley ranks at the top of my list for quality and high entertainment value. Dawn French is fabulous as Gerry Granger the vicar who shakes up a stiff farming community and turns them on their ears. For anyone who has ever seen the show to be able to have all the episodes in one box is a real treat. You will also fall in love with all the other characters from David Horton stuck up society man to the simple minded Alice Tinker.
The extras on the dvd are also something unique they take you inside the real world of women vicars and the church of England as well as showing a rare episode of the show done for charity.
I give this set an A+.