MORE TV VICAR?
Christians on the Telly:
The Good, The Bad and the Quirky
By Bryony Taylor
Darton, Longman & Todd. 155 pages. £9.99.
ISBN 978 0 232 531 701
Many of us have giggled at The Vicar of Dibley, Father Ted or the BBC’s recent Rev. But how helpful are the fictional representations of clergy and, by extension, Christians, on the box? Bryony Taylor, a curate in the diocese of Durham, examines a variety of TV’s most famous vicars to come up with an answer.
Her underlying premise is that telly vicars can be put into one of three categories.The ‘good’ are vicars who find themselves in over-idealised pastoral settings – idyllic English villages infused with a nostalgic glow, in which the local vicar bumbles around on a bicycle, offering cups of tea and being generally ineffectual. Although drawn with affection, Taylor argues that the characters unhelpfully promote an idea of Christians as ‘practically perfect in every way’.
