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The Vicar of Dibley is a British sitcom written by Richard Curtis.
The sitcom is about a small fictional village called Dibley that gets a female vicar, following a change in church law that allows women to be ordained. It is a comedic study of the effect that this has on a small rural community. The Vicar of Dibley came third in a 2004 BBC poll to find 'Britain's Best Sitcom'.
The show centres around eight main characters, seven of whom sit on the parish council:
- Geraldine Grainger, the female vicar, played by Dawn French
- David Horton, Conservative chairman of the parish council and pillar of the community, played by Gary Waldhorn
- Hugo Horton, David's son, played by James Fleet
- Frank Pickle, secretary of the parish council, played by John Bluthal
- Letitia Cropley, parish council member and creator of such delicacies as 'bread and butter pudding surprise' (a recipe for which she was breeding snails), played by Liz Smith
- Jim Trott, parish council member, played by Trevor Peacock
- Owen Newitt, parish council member, played by Roger Lloyd Pack
- Alice Tinker, verger at the church, played by Emma Chambers (Alice is the only character who does not sit on the parish council).
Other guest appearances have been made by Sean Bean, Darcey Bussell, Kylie Minogue and Terry Wogan, and Rachel Hunter.
The first series was aired on the BBC in the UK in November/December 1994, and there have been two other series produced, aired in January 1998 and December 1999 to January 2000. There have also been other special episodes made both for Comic Relief and as stand alone editions of the programme.
The show has been criticised for taking to extremes the worst stereotypes of rural communities and for showing people living in rural communities as being less intelligent.
In the show, Dibley is said to be located in Oxfordshire. However, real places are mentioned such as High Wycombe and Princes Risborough, both of which are in Buckinghamshire. The outdoor scenes of the show are filmed in the village of Turville, which is also in Buckinghamshire, and all the scenes that feature in the opening titles are in and around South Buckinghamshire.
In 2004, to celebrate 10 years since the conception of the sitcom, the BBC comissioned two special episodes to lead the 2004 Christmas line-up on BBC One. Both episodes were filmed in mid-October 2004, and featured the original cast. Rachel Hunter starred in the first episode, screened on Christmas Day, and is soon confused by Alice to be having a lesbian fling with Geraldine. The second screened on New Year's Day, where at the end of the episode Geraldine shows a video of two poverty-stricken children on her laptop. Both episodes are to be released on DVD following their Christmas screening, along with a special bonus episode filmed for Comic Relief 2005.
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