Rev: Faith, hope and charity

Adam Smallbone, the new BBC Rev., is engaging, with real spiritual depth. At last the BBC has moved beyond The Vicar of Dibley. She engaged millions with woolly jumpers and chocolate silliness, with a good humoured take on life, the Universe and everything. Rev. is engaging in a very different way, much closer to where many urban vicars are, in fact.
People talk of the Church of England as an institution, forgetting it isn’t anything of the sort — just a ragbag of around 20,000 trusts and bodies, loosely aligned, that has evolved over the past 1600 years. Its ties bind in all kinds of intriguing elasticated ways. Describing life in such a place is no light task.

It’s easy for any outsider to critique the detail of any TV depiction of anything. Years ago the BBC broadcast Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance. Next Day a retired military gentleman complained that “the Buffs in fact had seven buttons down their tunics not nine as portrayed by the BBC last night.” As any ful kno. This kind of complaint is rarely as clever as it seems to the person who makes it. We all know that few Archdeacons cruise round London in Taxis wearing Gestapo surplus leather gloves, but that’s not the point. The point is that’s how it feels.

On a personal and emotional level, Rev: is remarkably sure-footed. It brings back vividly for me memories of ten years’ urban ministry — trying to be a Christian and pray, feeling rather bemused often, filling the diary, trying to love people in the face of my own inadequacy, the size of the task, and the vagaries of human nature. Rev: has a clutch of improbable vicarage characters I could match almost name for name, as, I suspect, could anyone who’s ever been an urban vicar for any reasonable length of time.

For all its tendency to self-parody and caricature, I like Rev. It’s a noble enterprise. Those who wrote it know whereof they speak. Adam sits in his Church trying to pray the office, wishing God would bloody do something, but secretly suspecting he won’t until his unworthy servant has made it through the next funeral. It’s a ministry that resents all the distractions, until it realises that the ministry is the distractions.

There’s holiness in the unglamorous, haphazard, but profoundly kind and patient way C of E vicars do urban ministry, even in some of the crazier characters vicars encounter. It’s highly implicit, always understated, rarely obvious. Light very occasionally streams in serendipitously, but the grind is always there. You just have to pray for people, and try to help them make the best of themselves, and never give up.

There is, actually, courage, resilience, faith and even holiness wrapped up far more than thousands of urban vicars will ever know in their ministries. It deserves more understanding and respect than it sometimes gets, and this show does acknowledge its reality and worth. For all Rev:’s occasional TV simplification, full marks to writers, cast and crew for trying to capture it, and occasionally succeeding.

PS: I studied in Shoreditch thirty years ago. St Leonard’s was an amazing place, and it’s good of the telly people to give the old dump its own TV show.

In the Loop: Fake Hawk Down

Imagine, if you can, a world of soundbite politics where the machinery of power is operated by vacillating professional politicians, out of their depth, jumping to the whims of ruthless, feral spin doctors. Everyone is trying to use everyone else, but they don’t quite know what for, making it up as they go along, riding the tiger of inter-departmental politics, sending the whole world to smash in vain attempts to save their faces.

Armando Iannucci’s comedy presents history as pure cockup rather than conspiracy. Imagine Burn after Reading writ large & lurid across UK/US corridors of power, a blow-up version of AI’s The Thick of It. It easily translates to world stage and big screen.

The Big Plot of the film may not actually quite convince, perhaps because the Blair/Bush figures are a bit too far behind the curtain, but the tactical delivery system is absolutely first rate. Brace yourself for some of the foulest-mouthed comments ever committed to celluloid, remembering they are only just a little bit North of the way some among our burgeoning class of political special advisers seem to express themselves.

Peter Capaldi’s Alistair Campbell character is a riot of egotism, obscenity and ambition. Not-so-steadycam shots and quick pans add pace and a well-judged smidgin of documentary atmosphere to the whole absurd business, in a non-annoying way. Laugh at the ludicrous, but remember that penning a tale about sexing up information to order with entire disregard for truth, morality, or the human beings involved, did not call for much invention from Mr Iannucci.


It’s good to see a movie driven by a sharp script, not CGI. Lines are delivered pretty much perfectly, although some may wonder how someone as gormless as Tom Hollander’s Minister of Overseas Development made it anywhere beyond kindergarten. There are visual gags too, including a memorable moment when Mimi Kennedy (no relation) accidentally transforms herself in the Ladies’ rest room from jaded State Department senior into a Frankenstein monster. James Gandolfini richly deserves a chestful of medals for his portrayal of a big chunky but dove-ish five star general — “When you’ve been to war once you don’t want to go there again — like France...”

Perhaps we’re just a sarcastic bunch in High Wycombe, but the belly laughs rolled around the auditorium in a way I haven’t seen them do in a long while. It’s strange to live in a place where such a portrayal of our politicians and their advisers inspires knowing looks rather than depair, but if Mr Campbell & his chums really didn’t want to go down in history this way, as they are doing, their obvious remedy at the time would have been to stop behaving in ways that inspired it. Sleep tight tonight.

Rocking all over the world?

The Boat the Rocked is garish, jolly rumbustuous and profoundly nostalgic for anyone who ever tuned their tranny radio under the bedclothes, or owned a Dansette. Its cast of misfits and Barons of Beat is as superb a gang of British character actors as you will ever find bobbing around in the North Sea twenty miles off Lowestoft. Bill Nighy is a true diamond geezer. You even get Ken and Em chucked in for good measure, ranged appropriately on opposing sides. The plot is simple, perhaps a tad too simple, but whaddaya experct? King Lear? The film also has an authentic sixties coming of age subtext. The music is the Right Stuff, served up immaculately, although one may wonder why the needle never skipped, even as das boot crashdived.

I should also lay cards on the table and say I am, at heart, a Richard Curtis fan. Why shouldn't people make films about sweetness and light? However, sadly, something was missing, and I can’t quite put my finger on what. Did everyone enjoy themselves just a bit too much making it? Is the plot just too twiggy? Are the waters too shallow? Is there, in fact, a natural limit to the fun that can be had out of a bunch of bachelor boys bobbing around on the ocean in NHS specs with rubber johnnies but no girls?

Back in the 60’s popstars made uniquely British teenage “keep your hair on, daddy-o” middle class romps. The concept took a bunch of average grammar school kids — bubbly, rebellious in small ways, and slightly misunderstood. Their dim restrictive parents always turned out OK in the end. For a few years this was a surprisingly popular and compelling formula, for it reflected real feelings. “Come on kids! We’re all going on a summer holiday, in spite of our parents. There’s plenty of pop, we’ve got a real guitar, and we know some girls who may want to join us.” These movies were painfully, authentically, 1960’s. It irks me to admit it, but Cliff Richard was probably the master of the genre.

Nobody has been bold enough to make such a movie for at least thirty years, so I applaud the effort, and enjoyed the show. For all its may excellencies, TBTR is probably something of a niche product. It ain’t no Four Weddings, nor is it quite Mama Mia for Males, but if you like the basic pitch and don’t mind the clichéd script and plot, it yield an enjoyable evening out. Another three and a half out of five...

Remembering Humph (1921-2008)

Every now and then these islands produce a world class national treasure — William Shakespeare, Nelson, Queen Victoria, Monty Python and the late Queen Mum spring to mind. There in the background, however, through all those years has been Humphrey Lyttleton. The Bull's Head Barnes website says his band was established in 1684, but that’s just rumour and folklore. Any idiot who cares a pig's burp about jazz has at some time listened to the Monday night show he has presented since 1967, or been to the Bull’s Head; best jazz venue in London (along with the 606). Then there’s I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue, for 40 years the antidote to panel games.

Born at Eton, Buckinghamshire in 1921 (and ecclesiastically still Buckinghamshire), Humph has timelessly exhibited immaculate musical and comic timing, gentle quiptic silliness, and wonderment at the ridiculousness of it all. Anyone with a soul must be in deep mourning — “as the squirrel of time nibbles on the nuts of eternity while the irritated bulldog of destiny tries to shake him off,” we all notice it’s the end of the show. RIP.

Here’s a slightly vulgar final word. It is said that Percy Shaw, the Bradford inventor, noticed a cat walking towards him up the road one night in 1934, thought about it, and went straight to his drawing board to invent the Cat’s Eye road safety device. Next night, said Humph, the cat was walking away from him, and Percy went straight back to his drawing board and invented the Rotary mechanical pencil sharpener... Only in these islands, and by such a genius, would such a crazy noton be thought, let alone expressed.