Rev.

Rev: Your next favourite comedy show

Tom Hollander's Reverend Adam Smallbone is back for a second series - here's why you should watch it...

I wasn't entirely sure about last week's Rev, which seemed to make a slightly hesitant start to its second series. But this week's episode completely restored my faith. From the opening scene, in which Colin was discovered shooting "crack squirrels" in the church garden, to the long sequence at the end in which Tom Hollander showed us what it looks like when a vicar accidentally takes ecstasy ("I'm off my tits, Lord... Colin did it... naughty Colin" ), it was funny, sharp, beautifully written and full of charity. I don't actually believe God exists, but if he did I think he'd chuckle omnisciently.

The sight of the snidey ­Archdeacon Robert never fails to cheer us up on a Thursday evening - if only for his ­Tintin-esque hairdo.

Instead of the comb-over, he's invented the comb-UP, which is thrillingly pioneering for a man of his age.

This week he has a special gift for our very favourite vicar - a brand new female curate to help lighten his load.

Abi (played by Amanda Hale, who was so amazing as poor Agnes Rackham in The Crimson Petal And The White) turns out to be an absolute paragon of virtue and efficiency and an instant hit with her new ­congregation - which sends poor Adam (Tom Hollander) into fits of melancholy and jealousy.

So thank Heaven that he has his good friend Colin to lift his spirits - in ways he'd never have dreamed of.

Adorable, sweet and laugh out loud funny, Rev just gets more divine each week.

Inner-city vicar Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander) is perturbed when his vulpine archdeacon appoints a young female curate. And Abi (Amanda Hale) is so clever and enthusiastic that both he and Nigel (Miles Jupp) dislike her on sight. When she piously declares she wants to say a prayer before the meditation class, Nigel adds, helpfully: "It's just fat mums doing yoga."

Adam knows such thoughts are ignoble, but he can't help himself. Soon Abi is a big hit and Adam's world falls apart. It's another sweet episode of this soft-centred comedy held aloft by the wonderful Hollander. The scene where he joins in a children's service while tripping on ecstasy is a sight to behold.

Rev. - Directing the second series

As the director of Rev. it's hugely exciting to see the second series go on air even though I am still very busy finishing the last couple of episodes.

With day-to-day church life now including Colin taking potshots at "squirrels on crack", it's clear St Saviour's needs new inspiration. Thank heavens, then, for energetic, enthusiastic, clever Abi Johnston, who wants to sample inner-city life. All in the parish is sweetness and light, except Adam is jealous of his able, popular apprentice. He also accidentally samples MDMA ("I'm off my tits, Lord"), but luckily Colin knows how to deal with comedown blues: "Best off drinking through it."

Crack-addicted squirrels and a brilliant - and rather attractive - new curate, Abi (Amanda Hale), are the latest trials to test the faith of the Rev Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander) of St Saviour's, East London, in this lovably gentle comedy. Adam's initial enthusiasm at the prospect of someone to cover his weekends off soon gives way to jealousy, self-doubt and resentment when he realises how much better Abi is at his job. Surprisingly, Colin's (Steve Evets) chemical-based solution doesn't help.

Rev has undoubted charm but up against all those post-comedies, seems very conventional (part of the charm, no doubt). The support cast (Olivia Coleman, Hugh Bonnevill) are routinely excellent, though, and my favourite is Simon McBurney as the camp archdeacon who conducts church business in a sauna or the back of a taxi en route to somewhere pretentious. Last week it was the National Theatre, where David Hare was reading out emails.

While most of the TV listings and reviews will be concerned about a certain sitcom written by someone with too many awards on his mantelpiece, it's easy to overlook that another sitcom was also returning just before it.

The second series of Rev. began this week (I should point out that the full stop after Rev. is not out of some inflated sense of the need to stick to the rules grammar of punctuation, but because that's what it's actually called in the show's opening credits), with Tom Hollander returning as the Reverend Adam Smallbone. How fitting it is in this case for the vicar to be named after the first male sinner, especially as the opening scenes see him yawning while talking to God in his head and admitting he's stashed booze away while on a retreat - and not a holiday.

In this episode Adam accidentally stops a robber, resulting in inaccurate praise for him and getting nominated for a Pride of Britain Award. The show is clever in the way it makes Adam come to terms with his moral dilemmas, and about whether or not he should accept this honour.

However, I have to admit being slightly uncomfortable about watching Rev., sometimes because I don't want to see all these moral dilemmas played out in a sitcom. What I want to see is something funnier. But it's probably mainly because I was risen Catholic, and so to me the world of St. Saviour's in the Marshes has always been a bit alien. It's also probably why I preferred Father Ted to The Vicar of Dibley.

Still, when it gets it right, Rev. is an entertaining show and worth a watch.

Ralph Fiennes played the Bishop of London in the knockout opening of the wildly welcome return of Rev. Apparently real revs love Rev, as it makes them seem human. Tom Hollander again did just that, his face a perfect ever-changing landscape of very human conceits and contradictions and petty frustrations as he tries to be good. His Adam Smallbone struggled this week with the ethics of accepting a "hero" award for something he hadn't... exactly... done. At all. You truly felt for him; the church, his community, especially his wife, who wanted a new frock, were throatily urging him on, against his Christian (or simply human) instincts.

Watching his face as he was gently, subtly, quietly talked out of acceptance at the end by wise Bishop Fiennes was like watching an age-old battle, a Greek tragicomedy, the conflict between ego and honesty. Some of this is really beautiful. Other bits are just wise, funny, modern. Attempting to gee up sullen inner-city kids for a trip to the seaside, Adam asks, with eager innocence: "Now... how many of you have seen a cow?" All hands, of course, rise, in a chorus of boredom. Adam is relatively unfazed, but then furiously... fazed... at the paperwork, the CRB and health and safety forms needed to take to the seaside a bunch of children who virulently don't want to go. This is lovely.