Artimidor Federkiel If Mathews' and Linehan's "Father Ted" is the clerical comedy with a touch of the surreal and never ending absurdity, then Richard Curtis' "The Vicar of Dibley" is family fare in contrast endowed with a lot of heart, charm and warmth. Not in itself a bad thing if your main concern is to have it funny, as for very different reasons it's no less engaging or lacking side-splitting humor than the groundbreaking adventures of Ted & company on Craggy island. Curtis' writing transformed Rowan Atkinson into the dastardly snarky "Black Adder", made puppets deal heavy blows in "Spitting Image" and is responsible for the most successful British comedy features to date. And he did it again in the "Vicar of Dibley", blessed be his soul. Aside from partly bold and mostly hilarious writing the show succeeds thanks to a theater trained ensemble cast that couldn't have been chosen any better, a very fresh scenario (woman minister conquering ultraconservative domain sit-com style) and there's edgy social commentary modeled after a courageous real life female vicar. The latter only might have the disadvantage not to be as funny in church as the glorious Dawn French portraying a priest on church inspired TV.Ah yes, the French is coming! To Dibley! That's what it's all about. The parish council consisting of the overbearing head conservative plus dimwit son, a pedantic minute man, Letitia, "floral supervisor" with a decisive lack of taste, stuttering Jim and farmer Owen with, let's say, a lot of love for animals, well, they all aren't particular happy about a change. Aside from the local verger. She has a rather unique view on life, the universe and everything anyway. So it takes a while for the locals until it dawns on them that this new minister is actually not as bad as she might appear at first. In retrospect that progressive development is one of the brilliant things of the series: It stretches over more than a decade with multiple specials throughout the years, so that characters grow, fall in love, marry, even die, and along the way the once questioned role of the female vicar becomes more and more indispensable. Warning: You might not be a Christian yet, but with this one you seriously risk conversion!

TheLittleSongbird I do agree that the earlier episodes are better than the later ones, but the later episodes are still in my opinion entertaining and watchable. Whatever its minor problems may be, I love The Vicar of Dibley, it is heart-warming and very often hilarious. I love the concept, I think it is very unique, the stories are well-constructed and as well as being very funny, the writing is actually very bold and daring as well. The Vicar of Dibley is lovely to watch visually too, those landscapes of the countryside and everything are very picturesque and somewhat nostalgic as well, and the music especially the main theme song "The Lord is my Shepherd" by Howard Goodell which is beautiful. Also, the acting is really good, Dawn French I think is a very good comedienne whether with Jennifer Saunders or not, and she is fabulous here in probably her best role as the boisterous yet lovable Geraldine. And she is very well supported by Gary Waldhorn, James Fleet, Emma Chambers, Trevor Peacock, Roger Lloyd-Pack and John Bluthal. Overall, The Vicar of Dibley is a great show. 9/10 Bethany Cox

suemartin23264 The Vicar of Dibley had me in stitches when it was first aired in 1994. Now, I make sure to catch it whenever it's shown on TV. It never bores me! The First Series is very funny and I would recommend this to everyone. It's best to start watching this from the very beginning.This was followed by two specials : The Easter Bunny - which is hilarious, but also features the death of one of my favourite characters, and The Christmas Lunch Incident - which is definitely not one to be missed! After this, the sitcom gets seriously funny, what with the Comic Relief shorts and the final two Christmas specials - which are some of the best pieces of comedy ever to be filmed! In short, you'd be very stupid to miss this. The episodes are always aired now and again, so just catch one on the TV sometime, and I promise you, by the end - you'll be begging for more!

bs3dc Firstly, don't get me wrong. To begin with I thought the Vicar of Dibley was a great comedy, full of good story lines, interesting and eccentric characters and a lot of genuine laughs.However it has been a case of diminishing returns for some years now. Just look at the episode guide and see the large gaps in production of the series, so disjointed that in 12 years only 23 episodes were produced, in the same period a successful American comedy would probably output around 250 episodes. The first series or two were brilliant, but then the superior Father Ted came in and when VoD does return it feels more tired each time. It probably should have ended after this point. It is a mystery to me why British comedies struggle to maintain quality for more than two series, but it is nonetheless true that most sitcoms produced in this country end after either two seasons (Fawlty Towers being the prime example - and John Cleese looks more sensible for doing so all the time) or after three possibly. because the third series did not match the first two (Black Books).I was surprised to like it at all since I am no fan of Dawn French, but I found that without Jennifer Saunders she can be very funny. My opinion changed in the last two episodes however as the programme rapidly descended into the 'Dawn French Show,' with her running round screaming and generally leaving other characters with very little to say. This brings me to the conclusion that much of the praise that this comedy deserves belongs to Emma Chambers as Alice who plays the village idiot exceptionally well. Other characters like Roger Lloyd-Pack as Owen started off well but has more recently become a one-joke sheep farmer stereotype which only needed a Welsh accent to reach rock-bottom.Based on the early episodes, Vicar of Dibley deserves an 8 or 9 out of 10, but the last few series have been increasingly poor in comparison so I have awarded it 5/10.