Of all the series shoehorned into festive duties this year, Rev (BBC Two) is the most obvious fit. It’s about faith, after all, something you would not say about The Only Way Is Essex. Or, despite its name, Downton Abbey.
The second series of Tom Hollander and James Wood’s sitcom about a beleaguered east London vicar has built steadily on the first, sticking wisely to what it does best: character, and patient observation. Its precise script and muted central performances, particularly from Hollander as Rev Adam Smallbone and Olivia Colman as his wife Alex, keep the humour telling and the warmth unforced.
In last night’s yuletide special, the days leading up to Christmas itself were a string of disasters for Adam. As usual, he refused to blame those around him.
“Gosh, Christmas is such a difficult time for everyone,” he said to God. In fact, the only person Christmas was difficult for was him. Everyone else was shrouded in selfishness or indifference. Colin (Steve Evets) headbutted him, children mocked his Santa voice, someone stole the wheel of his bike. Alex’s father Martin (Geoffrey Palmer, having a ball as usual) behaved, in Adam’s words, like a “social hand grenade”, insisting on playing Risk and ridiculing the church’s work.
“You must be joking,” he ranted, after Adam invited him to join the church’s Christmas lunch for the homeless. “I don’t want an Amnesty International, Guardian-reading, low-carbon, politically correct Christmas. I want a family Christmas, with my daughter and the Queen and spuds and turkey and cranberry thing and sauce and gravy.”
The highlight of the episode was a Midnight Mass, where all the drunks and strays of the borough came swinging in for what Nigel (Miles Jupp) called “the religious equivalent of a kebab”.
“Come on Nigel,” said Adam, “make sure there’s enough communion wafer.”
“Yeah, because these people have all been confirmed,” came the tart reply.
It drove Adam nearly to breaking point, but in the end all came together. The cast arranged themselves in a tableaux of the Last Supper, and Alex announced she was giving Adam the greatest Christmas gift of all. Let us pray that this new life means we’ve not seen the end of Hollander’s great gift to the world.
