Victory to the vicar

My prize for the best thing on TV this year goes to the comedy Rev (BBC2, Thursdays). I know Simon Hoggart disagrees with me on this  — he finds it all a bit predictable. But in the spirit of Christmas I should like to point out that Simon is a wine-soaked pinko Guardianista who hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about, whereas I am world-famous for being right about everything, so there.

Why is Rev so good? Let us count the ways. Its alpha and omega — as with all the best sitcoms — is character. Apart from Perry and Croft’s various masterpieces and The Simpsons, I’m hard pushed to think of any other TV comedy with quite so extensive a cast of well-drawn, plausible, compelling major and minor characters.

Simon McBurney’s Mephistophelian Archdeacon Robert, for example. You wish he could have a spin-off series of his own, like Frasier did after Cheers. Mind you, you could say that about virtually the entire cast: Colin (Steve Evets), the chain-smoking, boozing, druggy tramp who calls the vicar ‘Vicarage’; Jimmy Akingbola’s frighteningly plausible, mad, black sponger-vagrant Mick; Adoha Onyeka (Ellen Thomas), the mumsy, effusive heart-and-soul of the congregation; Nigel McCall (Miles Jupp), the lightly camp, perpetually affronted lay reader who thinks he’d do a better job of running the church than the hero, the Rev Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander, who also co-writes the scripts with James Wood).

Archdeacon Robert is special, though, because he gets the best running gags: his persistent, gloriously unapologetic rejection of every cup of coffee Mrs Smallbone makes for him; his habit of briefing/debriefing the Rev in taxis, keeping him trapped or dropping him off in the middle of nowhere according to his sadistic whim; and, above all, his fantastical name-dropping.