Olivia Colman interview

Olivia Colman, best known for Peep Show, talks to the Metro about wanting to star in Downton Abbey, forgetting her lines in front of 1000 people and her return to the new series of sitcom Rev.

Tom Hollander on the return of Rev: interview

The actor Tom Hollander tells how his C of E sitcom on BBC Two wowed the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Rev is one of those rare beasts - a sitcom that actually gets funnier the better you know the characters. The first series took a bit of time to bed in, but the second hit the ground running. It opened with our inner-city vicar, Adam Smallbone, struggling to keep silent on a retreat - the first laugh came in under two minutes with Adam passing a nun and saying to himself, "Thank God I don't have to talk to her" before accidentally tripping up a mugger and getting lauded as a have-a-go hero.

Jokes aside, the joy of Rev lies in the characters. From Colin the drunk, through Alex the vicar's wife, to Robert the camp archdeacon, they all feel like people you might actually meet yourself. And would want to spend time with. The only slightly off note was Ralph Fiennes' cameo as the Bishop of London; but that was only because he seemed rather more in touch with normality than the real one. Quite deliberately, though, with little fanfare, Rev also gets to the heart of the modern church by exposing it as both a source of much goodness and a complete irrelevance. And that really is comic genius.

In the big-name ya-boo-sucks stakes, Life's Too Short will probably prove unsurpassable. Rev, however, was much funnier. Anchored around an impeccably turned performance from Tom Hollander as the vicar whose conscience and the real world don't get on, there is a timeless quality to this series.

This may be because the Rev Smallbone's struggle with himself and the world is essentially the struggle faced by folk of faith for all eternity; theologians call it theodicy and take it very seriously: writer James Wood has worked out that precisely because it is usually taken so seriously, it can also be very funny. Rev's standard mode is to undercut moments of seriousness, sublimity or sentiment with a comic sucker punch. The Rev's internal monologue last night (trying to think Holy Thoughts while being unable to stop himself wondering whether it would be that weird-tasting cauliflower cheese for lunch) was a classic example.

The plot was old-school sitcom with Smallbone emerging from last series's crisis of faith to foil a mugger. He had merely bumped into him but this spiralled into a Pride of Britain award nomination for the "Kung-Fu Vicar", which prompted the intervention from Lord Voldemort, a crisis of conscience and so on. People talk about what Rev has done for the Church. But it has also done much to prove that sitcoms can be warm-hearted, current, and still make you gag on your risotto with laughter.

The Rev. returns

Tomorrow night the fabulous Tom Hollander (In The Loop), Olivia Colman (Twenty Twelve) and Steve Evets (Looking for Eric) return to BBC Two at 9pm in the new series of Rev.

There's a film star cameo in the returning series of Rev, with Ralph Fiennes turning up as a godlike Bishop, but it's handled in an entirely different way to the sitcom it precedes. Yet, like Life's Too Short, this prompts a consideration of the temptations of fame, as the endearingly human vicar Adam has his Mount of Temptation moment. This religion-friendly comedy could so easily slip into cosy banalities, but it never quite does: it manages to be both moral and funny, which is rare and refreshing. Thank God for that.

A welcome second series for Tom Hollander and John Wood's gentle, exquisitely observed comedy about the quietly determined, morally conflicted vicar of a rough East London parish. Hollander is superb as the diminutive Rev Alan Smallbone, who tonight finds himself an unlikely nominee for a heroism award. There's a terrific supporting cast led by Olivia Colman, Miles Jupp, Hugh Bonneville and Ralph Fiennes.

At an apposite moment considering events at St Paul's, the sitcom about inner-city parish life returns. In the first episode, we catch up with the Reverend Adam Smallbone on retreat and contemplating such spiritual matters as whether "that strange cauliflower cheese" is on the lunch menu again. Still, excitement is nigh as Adam is mistakenly hailed as a have-a-go hero when he accidentally thwarts a mugging. A beautifully observed comedy that's by turns warm and acerbic.

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Tom Hollander's TV comedy Rev was a surprise hit - even the Archbishop of Canterbury is a fan - so why does the actor say he's a 'classic could-do-better person'? As a new series hits our screens, Simon Hattenstone finds out.

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