Tom Hollander: why he made the headlines in 2010

Tom Hollander's unworldly vicar, star of his 'dramedy' Rev, has become one of TV's most lovable comic characters.

Hallelujah for Rev

Thank the Lord, the BBC looks set to give the go-ahead for a second series of the superb ecclesiastical comedy.

I know I reviewed this at the beginning of the run, but I do hope you've all been watching, in the six intervening weeks, Rev, one of the highlights of the year. Only this masterfully written programme could have got away with offering, to a prime-time Tuesday night Beeb audience, an episode centred on the word "ontological", and have the lovely Tom Hollander quite unafraid to say it.

His questions to God, during his existential crisis, didn't just include the usual earthquake/Aids creation unanswerables. Instead, they were along the lines of: "Why do you allow there to be kids who don't know what the second world war is?" "Why are there no more bumblebees?" "Why do Nazis always live until they're 96?" If this isn't recommissioned I'll have a boob job.

A few weeks ago I dismissed the ecclesiastical sitcom Rev as far too understated and joke-shy for its own good. But I've since grown quite susceptible to its modest charms. I'm not religious, but I like that it avoids the cheap, obvious route of mocking Christianity. Instead it chides and celebrates the foibles of humanity, and presents us with a believable vicar, the terrific Tom Hollander's flawed yet likeable Adam Smallbone.

The final episode saw him question not his belief in God, but whether there is any point doing His work in a world full of suffering and idiocy. After making a drunken fool of himself, verbally abusing his wife and picking a fight with a gang of youths, he decided he was needed after all when called upon to deliver last rites to a dying pensioner. It's a credit to writer James Wood that he managed to juggle these tonal shifts convincingly. Beautifully performed by all, Rev is at once a thoughtful study of faith and a likeable comedy judiciously balancing pathos and humour. I kneel corrected.

TV review: Rev

The Rev might be going through a spiritual crisis, but he has made a believer out of me.

What's happened to Rev? It's suddenly full of (very welcome) gallows humour.

It seems Rev (BBC2) has been hiding its light under a bushel. For as Tom Hollander's Adam Smallbone suffered a crisis of faith that involved lolling about on a grubby settee stuffing Jaffa cakes into his Godless gob and watching seven back-to-back episodes of The Farmer Wants A Wife - enough to turn any man - it was clear we had left sitcomland far behind and had entered much darker territory.

'I am a remnant of an illusion of what people used to believe in,' observed Rev Adam, whose ontological despair was supposedly precipitated by a bitchy review from an anonymous pew-sitter on a Godsquad website, though it looked to have more to do with his unrequited lust for the local headmistress.

His suffering made for a mildly blasphemous giggle, shot through with the kind of weary take on societal stresses we could all relate to.

What had started out all Vicar Of Dibley ended up closer to the gallows humour of Nurse Jackie. What a happy, miserable surprise.

Vacillating vicar Adam Smallbone has hit crisis point. His house has become an unofficial drop-in centre for the likes of feral Colin, who roots about in his fridge ("Did you get any of that nice cheese?"), and the lupine archdeacon, who gloats over Adam's disastrous review on a religious website. Dog collar discarded, Adam alienates his congregation and makes an unholy spectacle of himself at a vicars and tarts bash thanks to his fantasy woman Ellie's attendance as a nun. The last episode of the series, a curate's egg that verges on the predictable, still contains those neat nuggets of social commentary and pithy character comedy that have made the series so likeable. Tom Hollander is outstanding as the errant cleric - a world away from buck-toothed twits of sitcom yore - but the minor characters all make their mark, too. It would be a sin if Rev were cancelled now.

Tom Hollander's display as put-upon east London vicar Adam Smallbone has been, punning aside, a revelation. The show itself has been good enough to make comparisons with The Vicar of Dibley look more than foolhardy, so let's hope that a second series is forthcoming. This final episode sees Adam suffer a crisis of confidence and faith after reading a scathing review of one of his sermons on a church social network - the struggle to work out what he's doing with his life that follows is, like Rev as a whole, poignant and funny.

Rev: the vicars' verdict

Tonight it's the last in the series of Rev, the sitcom about an inner-city vicar. Real-life reverends look back at the programme.