The Vicar of Dibley is a British television sitcom, created and written by Richard Curtis, and produced by Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC One. It stars Dawn French as Geraldine Granger, the first-ever female vicar assigned to the position in the small Oxfordshire village of Dibley.
During the course of the programme, 20 episodes of The Vicar of Dibley aired, including six specials over three series, between 10 November 1994 and 1 January 2007. In addition, outside of the series, there have been seven charity specials[1] and four "lockdown" specials.[2]
When Reverend Pottle, the 102-year-old vicar of Dibley, dies, the villagers eagerly await his replacement. To their shock, the replacement vicar is a woman. While David Horton tries to have her removed, the other villagers grow to love their new vicar.
The Songs of Praise team come to Dibley to film in St. Barnabas' Church. The townsfolk all want to be involved, while Geraldine falls for the show's producer Tristan Campbell (played by Peter Capaldi), and David, meanwhile, becomes enamoured of Ruth, the camera operator. However, on the evening filming is wrapped, Geraldine and David are heartbroken to discover that Tristan and Ruth are in a relationship. Guest starring Pam Rhodes as herself.
David stands for re-election to the local council but faces competition when the villagers declare that they want the vicar to run. She agrees not to stand as long as David makes a few election promises. Featuring the voice of Alistair McGowan.
As Easter comes to Dibley, each council member gives up something for Lent: Geraldine gives up chocolate, David stops being unpleasant, Hugo forgoes lustful thoughts, Owen stops swearing, Letitia stops "cooking garbage", Frank stops being tiresome and Jim stops dithering. Sadness later comes to Dibley when Letitia dies, and Geraldine promises to take over her role as the Dibley Easter Bunny, which involves dressing up in a rabbit costume.
When Geraldine is invited to four separate Christmas dinners, she does not have the heart to refuse any so goes to all four. On Christmas night she is visited by Songs of Praise producer Tristan Campbell, who asks her to marry him. Geraldine is overwhelmed until he introduces his fiancée (played by Orla Brady), and it becomes apparent that he wants her to conduct his wedding. Guest starring Mel Giedroyc as Alice's sister and Carol MacReady as Alice's mother.
Alice and Hugo's wedding is approaching, with Jim as best man and children dressed as Teletubbies. Meanwhile, Geraldine is attracted to David's brother from Liverpool, Simon (played by Clive Mantle). During her hen night, Alice also reveals the shocking identity of her biological father. Guest starring Geraldine McNulty.
The BBC lists the following four episodes as forming Series 3 on its website, whilst the DVD box set lists them simply as "The Seasonal Specials".
Hugo and Alice return from their honeymoon, and Alice is pregnant. Meanwhile, David's brother Simon returns, and he and Geraldine begin a passionate relationship. However, when he says he is seeing another woman back in Liverpool, she is so devastated that she refuses to attend any services and offers her resignation.
The Bishop of Mulberry is to officiate at the christening of Alice and Hugo's baby. Geraldine and Owen are to be the godparents, while Frank and Jim act as god-grandparents. As David thinks about how he misjudged Geraldine when she arrived, he decides they are well-matched and asks her to marry him. When David goes to some considerable lengths to demonstrate that he is prepared to change himself for Geraldine, she is swept away by his declaration of love and ends up accepting. However, after Geraldine has a dream of her celebrity crush, she quickly regrets accepting David's proposal and tries to extricate herself from the situation without hurting David's feelings.
It is Geraldine's 10th Christmas in Dibley, and to celebrate they hold a competition to see who can write the best Christmas carol. Meanwhile, at a party to celebrate her anniversary, David invites the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (played by Brian Perkins). Following a discussion between Alice and Geraldine about who they would want to sleep with if they were gay, Alice then informs the parish council that Geraldine is gay when she sees a nearly naked Rachel Hunter in the vicarage. After her anniversary party goes badly, Geraldine drinks three bottles of wine before midnight mass.
The villagers want to celebrate Geraldine's 40th birthday, so they buy her a ticket to a speed dating evening. However, when she goes it turns out that most of the dates are the other villagers. When Geraldine leaves without a date, Hugo offers to sleep with her and impregnate her so she can have a baby, revealing that he and Alice now have ten children. Meanwhile, Geraldine is trying to get the villagers enthusiastic about the 20th anniversary of Live Aid and encourages them to write to the Prime Minister about the Make Poverty History campaign. However, when they show no interest, she shows them a short video depicting two poverty-stricken children, and the episode concludes with all of them wearing armbands in support of the campaign. Guest starring Miranda Hart, Nathalie Cox and Cristian Solimeno as organiser and participants in the speed dating respectively.
Concerned that Dibley is losing its community feel, Geraldine starts an art class and a book club. Neither are very successful as everyone gets distracted by the life model and nobody is interested in the book. After reading The Da Vinci Code, Alice thinks that as her name rhymes with "chalice" she must be descended from Jesus.
Having officiated at 100 weddings, Geraldine is excited to finally be the bride. Harry sensitively leaves her alone to research dresses, but the parishioners invade, taking over all the organisation as a thank you gift for Geraldine's decade of friendship. Hugo presents a disastrous This Is Your Life, but the evening is saved when a power cut gives the group opportunity to simply chat and show their appreciation for each other.
Before the wedding, Owen, Jim and Rev Jeremy Ogilvy (played by Hugh Bonneville), an old college friend whom Geraldine has chosen to conduct the service, all propose to her. After a number of setbacks, the bride looks beautiful in her white dress until Owen drives the car through a muddy puddle. Geraldine attends the ceremony in her pyjamas – Harry's favourite pair – with Alice dressed as the Tenth Doctor and Dalek bridesmaids. As the newly married Harry and Geraldine leave the service, she flies up into the sky above Dibley, overcome with joy.
Geraldine participates in a wife-swapping reality television show and gets to live with Sting. While Harry spends the week with Trudie Styler, Geraldine thinks that Sting is flirting with her. When it turns out he is not, she shoves a cake in his face. Alice questions Sting's appearance in his band The Police, comparing him to her uncle who was in the police.
Geraldine and the parishioners head to London to vote on allowing women to become bishops, but make the mistake of sending Jim to cast the vote. Meanwhile, Geraldine flirts with an attractive vicar (Damian Lewis) and Frank's failing hearing leads him to make some major slip ups.
After taking part in the Ice Bucket Challenge (which itself goes awry), Geraldine gets an offer to become Bishop. Confusion on her behalf, however, leaves her last in the running when other, more successful, candidates turn up for the interview process. Guest starring Richard Ayoade, Annette Crosbie, Maureen Lipman, Emma Watson, Ruth Jones, Jennifer Saunders and Fiona Bruce. The only regular characters to appear are Geraldine, Hugo and Jim.
Following the lockdown caused by COVID-19, Geraldine gives a short service to her parishioners from her home. She describes her efforts to tidy up the mountain of Easter eggs, and issues corrections to the parish newsletter. The latest parish council meeting was also relayed, though attempts to use Zoom backfire as no one else has a computer, so Geraldine is left to make all the decisions herself. The short ends as Geraldine promises that the situation will be resolved.
For Comic Relief 2021, Dawn French appeared as Geraldine alongside real-life TV vicar Rev Kate Bottley lip-syncing to Juice by Lizzo.
In December 2020, a series of shorter "lockdown" episodes of The Vicar of Dibley were broadcast.[7] These were mainly monologues by Geraldine, in the form of COVID-19 lockdown video messages to her congregation, with occasional appearances by Hugo. In a change to pre-2020 episodes, the characters broke the fourth wall speaking directly to the viewer as if they were Dibley residents. These lockdown minis were made, set and shown during the pandemic when churches were closed for many months and congregations across the UK met virtually via methods such as Zoom.
A compilation of all three of the lockdown episodes. The vicar muses upon lockdown, social distancing, masks and absent friends. The episode contains additional previously unseen material and scenes.