I was slightly surprised, on my first visit to the UK, to discover that not all British television shows are good.  I know, I shouldn't have been shocked, but having grown up on a healthy diet of Monty Python, The Goodies, Dr. Who, and The Avengers, I had just sort of assumed that all English shows were superior to what was offered to us poor souls in the US.  Of course, that is not necessarily the case.  The BBC creates some great shows, but it also has its share of awful ones.  While I do enjoy most of the shows that I have seen that are imported from England, there are some that have been terribly disappointing.  (Try as I might, I have never found Are You Being Served? or Benny Hill amusing.) Consequently, I approach each new British show with mixed feelings; I have high hopes that it will be very good, but at the same time have a great fear that it will be horrible.  That's how it was when I viewed the first episode of The Vicar of Dibley, I was a little apprehensive but also hopeful.

I needn't have worried.  The series is written by Richard Curtis, who worked with Rowan Atkinson on Black Adder and Mr. Bean.  He also wrote the movies Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill.  While the satire in this series is not as biting as it was in Black Adder, the show is still laugh-out-loud funny.

Vicar stars Dawn French (of French and Saunders) as the quirky Geraldine Granger, the new Vicar in a small English town.  At first the locals are in an uproar that they were sent a female cleric, but she soon wins them over with a combination of charm and outrageousness.  The only standout is her foil for the series, David Horton who is also the chairman of the Dibley Parish council.

The Episodes on this disc are:

Arrival:  Awaiting the arrival of their new reverend, the members of St. Barnabas Church are surprised to find out that "Gerry" their new Vicar's name, is short for Geraldine.

Songs of Praise:  When the BBC hear about the female reverend, they decide to send a crew to film a service for a TV show.

Community Spirit:  To help raise money during the church's annual fair, Geraldine tries to find a famous star to open the event.  Her verger informs her that she has a cousin who is in show business, Reg Dwight (Elton John's real name,) who agree to perform.  But will Elton really show up?
 
The Window and the Weather:  An expensive stained glass window is broken during a storm.  The council has to come up with a way to raise the funds to replace it.

Election:  David Horton is running for re-election as city councilor, but the villagers think that the Vicar would make a better representative.

Animals:  Gerry decides to hold a service for all the animals in the village.  David thinks that this might just be the excuse he's been looking for to finally get her removed.
 
As you can probably tell by the descriptions, these are fairly standard sitcom plots.  What makes this series rise above the other comedies out there is the series' solid writing.  While not as tightly scripted as Fawlty Towers, the stories do hang together very well.  The plot outcomes are not particularly surprising, but a lot of the humor is.  What may start off as an innocuous comment about the weather suddenly changes into an outrageously funny discussion about the difference between a great storm and a great wind, and how to name them.

Vicar of Dibley is very reminiscent of Father Ted. Both programs deal with religious leaders in small communities and the problems they face, but the shows are very different.  Vicar of Dibley does not have the raw edge that Father Ted has.  It is toned down a lot.  The show is a bit rude, with its share of potty humor, but it is not sacrilegious.  Most of the humor comes from the villagers reactions to situations that they find themselves in, and not necessarily the situations themselves.   Vicar is wacky, but not silly.  It is also funny without being offensive.  This is a show you can watch with your mother or aged aunt and not have to worry.

The only real down side to the show for American audiences is that there are a good number of jokes about British celebrities, most that I've never heard of.  Lines like "You're the saddest person in the kingdom, and that's including Rolf Harris." just leave me scratching my head.

One last note:  Be sure to sit through the credits.  There is a joke after they finish rolling, that is usually hilarious.
 

The show is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, which is perfectly adequate for this type of show.  The dialog was clear with no noticeable hiss or noise.  The music during the credits sounds full and rich.  There did not seem to be many, if any, use of stereo effect.  There are no subtitles.

Video:

Unfortunately, the video is not of the same quality as the program itself.  It is presented in full frame, as it was originally shot, but there has not been any restoration preformed on this series.  While the picture is not awful, it is not very good either.  The whole image is a little blurry, especially in the opening credits.  The lines are not crisp, and the backgrounds are not as clear as they should be.  The colors seemed to be a little on the red side, but only slightly.  A slightly below average presentation, that should not discourage anyone interested in the show from purchasing it.

The Extras:

There were not any extras on the review disc that I viewed.

Final Thoughts:

Dawn French does a great job, as does the rest of the cast in this show.  The writing is very good, and the situations, though a little hackneyed, are funny.  I found myself laughing aloud several times in every episode.  The Vicar of Dibley is a hilarious sitcom, and worth picking up.