Rev. Series Two Episode 7 "Christmas"

I love this show...
I remember reading about it in the beginning of year TV outlines from the UK in early 2010 but which is yet to make it to screens here in Oz!
The first series was only six episodes long and it's been a while until they picked it up again...

   The program tells the story of Rev Adam Smallbone as he and his wife Alex [with her own career as a Solicitor] move to a small struggling parish in London called 'St Saviours in the Marshes.'
   The small band of regular characters provide gritty comedy drama about a whole range of life and faith issues. It is not 'The Vicar of Dibley' because these characters are contemporary, complicated and from across the community on modern London.
   This show nails it in terms of call/vocation, context, mission and the small details that grind away in the face of 21st C challenges for an urban vicar and each and everyone of the characters in the story.
   I don't know what it's like for others but the echoes of everyday amplify the humour and the pathos for me.
   I used two scenes from series one at a youth event last January and there are heaps of small moments and significant conversations bringing a visual reality to the everyday storylines... especially bench seat conversations between Adam and the brilliantly written Colin.

"Tom Hollander said,"[w]e wanted to define ourselves in opposition to the cliché of a country vicar, partly because we wanted to depict England as it is now, rather than having a sort of bucolic-y, over the hills and far away, bird-tweeting England – we wanted the complications of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic inner-city, where everything is much harder."
 
SPOILER ALERT
   In this Christmas episode Adam is busy doing the details of making Christmas Eve and Christmas Day a meaningful time for all and it ends up costing him at every step... it's advent writ large and I had tears streaming down my face as he attempted to wrangle things into a manageable mess!!
   The pub drunks at Midnight Mass, the stolen bicycle tyres, Colin's punch in the eye... all took their toll!!
Adam perhaps felt worst about missing the final hours of friend Joan's life having promised to visit her at the retirement home and being held up a few times...
   The 'Rev.' BBC website is here