Very Cool!!!

I wanted to but couldn't!

Excellent adaptation.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

So this week I was flying back from LA to Toronto on Air Canada and noticed a British sitcom on their entertainment system. I managed to watch 4 out of the 6 episodes on offer and LOVED every single second. The writing, characters and observations on life in general were so well done.The first episode I watched centred around fundraising for a new playground by both Muslims and Christians. The Muslims raised $12K in a few days and the Reverend's congregation raised only 69 pence. Priceless! The Rev. is kind, compassionate and gentle but not without his own flaws and it's refreshing to see a religious character as both the main character and portrayed as NORMAL. With a wife and kid and dealing with all sorts of interesting parishioners. Mick, in particular, steals every scene he's in - HILARIOUS!!! Anyway, this show made my flight so much more palatable. Only wish we had this show in Canada so I could watch the rest.

I finally gave this show a go, for the last episode in the series, and it's left me completely bewildered as to what all the fuss has been about. I had tried it once previously only to find the credit sequence so annoying that I switched it off.But, having read rave reviews in the press (Guardian, Telegraph, Standard), with columnists dubbing it 'brilliant', feting it as a masterpiece and praising the performances, I steeled myself to try again.I really wish I hadn't bothered.I found Tom Hollander entirely unprepossessing in a vaguely irritating way. His relationship with wife Olivia Colman had no ring of truth – their absurd polite arm's-length behaviour made it seem like they didn't know each other at all but had just been deposited on the same set together that day. She was phonily perky like someone instructed to alter her tone to 'jolly' and 'upbeat' as if talking to a child in need of special encouragement.They are supported by a cast of characters who all have faces that you want to slap.Is it meant to be a comedy? There was no humour in it, not a single funny line, bar the chap professing himself to be very good at humility.I have never had much sympathy for self-indulgent people who lie in bed moping all day after a setback, as the lead did in this episode. After all, he has a wife, child and people who appear to respect him despite the fact that he comes across as a bit dim and self-centred.Thank goodness this wasn't some gem that had passed me by but rather a travesty of a comedy/drama/whatever (I couldn't really tell), purporting to be intellectual and appealing for some reason to the moneyed upper-middle classes.

This meditation on how a a Good man might fare as a Priest in modern inner city London is so real that, as in life, it's often almost impossible to know whether you want to laugh or cry. Often I did both. And at the same time. The story arc leads to flirting with the old postulation on what would we do to Jesus if he walked among us today, but the deeper insight is into what it means for us mere mortals, just to try to be good, even Christian, in this world, surrounded by the selfish and the self involved, the deluded and the indifferent. As writing it isn't being bettered anywhere on TV. As a company, all the players are brilliant, as the protagonist, Tom Hollander stakes a claim of such star quality, warmth and truth, as should make every writer and director beg to have him work with them. Along the way to the denouement, guest stars Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neesons involvement points to the richly deserved recognition that this show has received. The end is almost too much to take...but by a God I'm grateful that it got made.

"Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for your soul." G.K. Chesterton. This show is good for the soul. Minister's on TV are always portrayed as hell-breathing sledge hammers, naive, bumbling, pleasant wimps or something more sinister. (In Australia no one even bothers to include them as characters as God seems to be an irrelevancy in "the colonies".) But this show is nuanced, perceptive, vaguely shocking and laugh-out-loud funny. I really like the way Adam prays in his head. I pray like that too. It feels a bit like Adrian Plass, affectionately irreverent. Maybe I am being a "Nigel", but if I was a minister, I would very much like to be like this one. An unsentimental show about a peculiarly profound vocation.