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“It was important to us that the priest is not represented as a complete idiot in the show,” says Tom Hollander. He’s sitting in the over-salubriously wallpapered surroundings of a Soho private members club alongside co-star and on-screen wife Olivia Colman. But they’re here to talk about Rev, the thoughtful, slightly careworn sitcom that’s returning for a welcome third series. “In previous incarnations,” he continues, “whether it was Derek Nimmo or Rowan Atkinson or Father Ted, the priest or vicar is a bit of a twat. Adam Smallbone is the hero, with a very small ‘h’, of Rev. It’s the people around him who are the oddballs.”

The Reverend Adam Smallbone is fundamentally decent, but with none of the otherworldly airs of the stereotyped cleric. He’s not The Vicar Of Dibley, nestled in her cosy, reassuring, rural sitcomland. “It’s not Downton Abbey, it’s not a Sunday night, fear of Monday morning show,” says Hollander. Nor is it the cosy, bucolic England easily exportable to an American audience who, Hollander believes, would be put off by the programme’s “defeated sensibility” (although an American version of Rev is, apparently, at the development stage). As the downbeat opening credits suggest, this is England as a grey and unpleasant land of roundabouts, roadworks, blowing litter and blank indifference. “It does tell you about the day-to-day work of a vicar,” adds Colman, with the conclusion being: “It’s fucking hard.”

Smallbone is working on the frontline, at east London’s St Saviour’s In The Marshes. He is faced with economic woe on his doorstep, as personified by Colin, the derelict washed up from Moss Side, as well as near-empty pews and dwindling funds. He’s beset on all sides: by his own church, pressuring him to embrace some new half-baked initiative, by parents only attending services to get their kids into good schools, by jeering workmen and narky schoolkids. At the same time, Smallbone has to endure his own constant crises of faith in a God who offers no divine assistance whatsoever.

Wearied by his lot, and the Job-like tribulations and humiliations he must endure, he’s a man of small vices – a smoker and boozer who often wakes up to Nurofen breakfasts surrounded by the bottles and cans of the night before. He lusts pathetically after the local headmistress, is a disappointment in many ways to wife Alex, is given to jealousies, rivalries and even the odd “bromance” fixation. He’s got a potty mouth when persistently provoked, as those jeering workmen and schoolkids soon discover. But he’s not a whisky priest; and, for all the comedy at his expense, is not a fatuous figure of fun. He wavers all over the place, but ultimately is unshakeable in his sense of vocation, with each show enjoying what Hollander calls “moments of grace”.

There’s a lengthy list in Rev’s credits of ecclesiastical consultants, including the Rev Richard Coles, Radio 4 presenter and formerly of pop group the Communards. Hollander himself is involved in the research, in which he learned of the present-day church’s increasing role in making up for the shortfall in state provision for the poorest. “The most moving scene I saw was a church in Somers Town in London, near King’s Cross, which has been a poor place historically and continues to be. It was full of people who were sleeping [there] – asylum seekers and local people. We represented it in the background in the Christmas special but it wasn’t the centre of the story, it was context. But certainly, I’ve been taught through the research about what the work of the church actually is.”

The show works, however, not because it’s didactic but for its comedy and casting. Hollander talks of a “Dad’s Army” vibe, “an array of distinctive characters”. These include the suavely callous Archdeacon Robert, prone to dropping off Adam in the middle of nowhere on their pained taxi rides together, over-tactile parishioner Adoha, the combative Colin, as well as the stuffily ambitious, potentially treacherous lay reader Nigel (Miles Jupp). Then there is Adam’s wife Alex, a barrister who only reluctantly agrees to a life in a very unsecluded inner-city vicarage in which, as Colman says, “someone’s going to knock on your door at any fucking time of day or night”. Certainly, she demonstrates no particular religious instincts. “She’s atheist… isn’t she?” says Colman, looking to Hollander for guidance. “It’s never really been touched upon.”

Hollander: “Well, she’s agnostic, for sure – but she does pray…”

Colman herself is central to the appeal of Rev. Increasingly renowned for deceptive craft as an actor, she is darkly nuanced as Hannah in Tyrannosaur, a victim of domestic abuse with a very different sort of attachment to the Christian faith than Alex. She was superb as Sophie in Peep Show – the role in which she first came to prominence – who starts off as a Mark’s object of romantic longing, a distant English rose, but slowly degenerates into a frankly horrible, emotional mess of a character as the series progresses. She brings great emotional heft to the role of Sue in an episode of Jimmy McGovern’s Accused, a distraught anti-gun protester. Yet she can also turn in comedic performances, such as Green Wing, as if she were born to play nothing but fun parts.

Hollander’s pedigree is equally formidable. He plays villains, such as the devious and treacherous Lord Cutler Beckett in Pirates Of The Caribbean, trading as if on a small man’s complex with an overcompensating intensity and determination to do down his fellow man. At the same time, he is at home playing characters utterly out of their depth, such as the hapless, error-prone and easily manipulated Simon Foster MP in In The Loop. It is Rev, however, the series he co-created with writer James Wood, that seems most central and engrossing to him, closest to his soul.

That might be because, alongside the religion, there’s a more secular moral to Rev, too: the deep need for community and social interdependency, under siege in our stressed and straitened times. As a vicar, Adam has no choice but to face up to this reality every day. The church justly takes a bad rap nowadays, for instances of institutional bigotry, hypocrisy and cover-ups of child abuse. However, Adam Smallbone represents a facet of the church that’s just as real – a moral example of social responsibility, of “just doing good”, as Colman puts it.

Despite excellent reviews and a solid, highly loyal BBC2 audience, Rev feels like it can sink still deeper into the bosom of the nation’s affections. First broadcast in 2010, it was commissioned with remarkable swiftness, given the legendary snail’s pace of the comedy process. A second series followed but there’s been a lengthy delay prior to this third series. James Wood had given the impression in interviews that this was due to actors such as Colman and Hollander being too busy to commit to making new episodes, but both vehemently deny this. “That’s not true at all,” says Hollander. “James wanted a break and we all wanted a bit of time off. But also the delay was because a lot of research goes into preparing these series.”

Season three, in which Peep Show co-creator Sam Bain is also involved, adds the Smallbones’ baby, which duly brings with it a fresh hell of over-attentive parishioners, no sleep and marital sexual frustration. Plus, there are two new female administrative characters – an area dean, played by Joanna Scanlan, and a diocesan secretary (Vicki Pepperdine) – both of whom will add further to Adam’s daily stresses. He must also come to terms with Imam-envy and the gay marriage question in a series which, Hollander says, will see Adam – who is already “in constant negotiation with his faith” – tested to breaking point.

But then, that’s Adam’s inescapable quandary and his redemption: his calling, his bloody calling. “A lot of the comedy comes out of him doing the right thing in the name of this God who may or may not be there, in spite of all the appalling behaviour around him,” says Hollander. “The fact that he’s sticking by God and the church is an endless source of humiliation to him. And he’s in that predicament because of this vocation.”

All of which is why even an atheist/agnostic like his wife sticks with him and why even the atheist/agnostic viewer is minded to sympathise with, even root for Adam. Imagine having all those modern doubts, frustrations, anger about God but having to wear a smock and believe in the old bastard, too.

Despite its cautionary tone, it seems Rev has proven an attraction to aspiring young clergy. “Apparently, there are expanding numbers of people signing up for ordination,” says Hollander. “I’ve no idea if that’s to do with Rev, no one’s researched that, but at [Anglican theological college] Westcott House in Cambridge they do have the ordinants watch Rev to show them what it’s going to be like.”

“And they don’t all drop out?” asks Colman.

“No, they think, ‘Christ, I might get to marry Olivia Colman.'”

Rev starts on BBC2 on 24 Mar

Source: theguardian.com – Olivia Colman and Tom Hollander on Rev