The Southbury Child is a comedy drama set in east Devon featuring a distressed vicar, Fr David, with a complex addiction history. Alex Jennings stars with his habitual urbane charm. Is there perhaps a credibility gap there? Jennings seems far too decent, clever and friendly to be a problem drinker who likes nothing better than a fling with a randy wench. And, more crucially, he doesn’t face the fallout from his days of boozing and bedhopping. His dramatic task is unconnected to his personal flaws.
A little girl has died in controversial circumstances and her parents want balloons at her funeral. No way, says the vicar. The family fight back. Civil war erupts and Fr David faces dismissal while his newly appointed curate, a gay hunk from Glasgow, tries to take over the parish.
A cast of enjoyable minor characters completes the snapshot of West Country life. There’s an evil but lonely gossip who goes around creating trouble and a motorcycling policewoman who keeps on working despite being heavily pregnant. The posh characters are all educated and articulate while the ooh-arr locals are less inhibited and lacking in intellectual polish. This binary division into toffs and proles seems a little formulaic and yet that’s precisely how villages divide up.
The script by Stephen Beresford is the sort of minor middle England yarn that might have felt dated in the West End a century ago. Which is precisely the point. The show ignores theatrical fashions and pressure groups. It doesn’t preach or grumble or make you feel guilty for not caring enough about people you don’t care about anyway. It offers a parade of charmingly flawed and recognisable characters who deliver a stream of top-quality gags in a familiar dramatic setting.
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