Tom Hollander

Tom Hollander's Adam Smallbone is such a lovable creation, I'm starting to wish he could find a life outside of this series where, by definition, he's slightly hemmed in by storylines about the business of being an inner-city vicar.

Tonight's episode is written by Coronation Street scribe Jonathan Harvey, and it would have been an ideal opportunity for him to bundle dinky little Adam into a largish picnic hamper and take him back up the M6 to practice vicaring on the streets of Weatherfield.

Tonight sees Adam attempting to spread his wings a little by flirting with the smoky trappings of Roman Catholicism - or, in the words of Nigel his curate, "going a little bit Abramovich".

The occasion is the wedding of a chap called Leon (Colin Salmon) who Adam wants as his new best friend. Lord knows, he's in need of one of them.

Tom Hollander (Rev) interview

Tom Hollander talks about Rev...

Tom Hollander's Rev Adam Smallbone is contemplating the loneliness of the clerical calling in the latest episode of this sprightly comedy. He can't even make friends among his parishioners, he complains, because "I've got to be on at all times. I've got to be nice." A prospective groom provides a temporary escape from his isolation but the Rev's desire to please leads to a plan to provide "the smoky stuff" - burning incense - at his wedding ceremony. Enter Simon McBurney's high camp and very arch archdeacon, at the first whiff of "Latinate choreography".

Tom Hollander: meet the Rev

Tom Hollander's latest role as an inner-city vicar is earning him popular recognition - and the praise of fan Lily Allen. But he's been a hard-working actor ever since his student drama days with Nick Clegg.

Rev is such a good-hearted, sweet-natured comedy, it feels churlish to wish that it could, somehow, be better. Tom Hollander is a pocket-sized delight as the well-meaning inner-city vicar Adam Smallbone, but the scripts don't give him enough to work with. As a result, Rev is too mild and lacking in comedy backbone. There are still incidental pleasures though, like Nigel the hand-wringingly earnest curate. Hugh Bonneville is good value, too, as an insufferable media-whore of a vicar who prompts a riled Adam to decide that he should have a media career of his own. He starts by posing for cheesy publicity pictures ("Do I look authoritarian but dashing?") and ends with a disastrous appearance on The One Show.

This priest-com is a surprise hit, scoring 2.2 million in the ratings and receiving rave reviews. Rightly so, as it's neatly observed and superbly played. In this fourth episode, our inner-city dog-collared hero Rev Adam Smallbone (the fine Tom Hollander) gets jealous when, in a neat bit of Beeb cross-fertilisation, he hears a rival on Thought for the Day. Adam promptly gets on The One Show himself but his self-publicising plans backfire when he makes an unwise remark about homosexuality.

Reverend Josh Zvimba on Rev

Tom Hollander's comedy vicar is a long way from the truth.

Rev isn't the kind of sitcom that brings on uproarious, helpless laughter. It has broadish gags - tonight, for instance, vicar Adam finds himself hiding a dirty magazine behind his back during a conversation with a Muslim woman - but they feel like a dutiful necessity. Rev's heart is elsewhere. Where it really scores is in the believable human world it conjures up and in the way it makes us care about Adam Smallbone (the increasingly brilliant Tom Hollander) and his many dilemmas. Adam's a basically nice chap, awash with uncertainties. What counts as offensive? What does being modern mean? And should he oppose planning permission for a strip club opposite the church?

Islam and lap-dancing. Not two subjects you'd usually expect to find rubbing shoulders in the same sitcom but then the life of a modern London vicar is nothing if not rich and varied.

Tonight's episode sees the Rev opening his church to a children's Muslim prayer class and visiting the local gentleman's club with Lucy Liemann's sexy headmistress - purely in the interests of research, of course.

There are plans to open a lap-dancing club right next to the C of E school and before Adam objects he needs to have first-hand knowledge of what it is he's opposed to exactly. That it doesn't even occur to his wife Alex (Olivia Colman) to object to either the lap-dancing or the headmistress tells you everything you need to know about Adam's wholegrain moral fibre.

His unique selling point is his "well­­meaningness" and Tom Hollander portrays him beautifully.

Rev - BBC2 - Review

And lo, a miracle has occurred! BBC comedy springs back to life thanks to Tom Hollander's inner-city vicar.