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YMMV / The Vicar of Dibley

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  • Anvilicious:
    • Nearly averted, in a way. Despite being created with the purpose of dropping an anvil on the issue of female vicars, once the point had been made, the show moved on to more general insanity rather quickly.
    • Played straight with the Make Poverty History episodes, which were decidedly controversial due to making the last 8 minutes of one episode an advert for the campaign.
    • The "Vicar in Lockdown" specials in late 2020 drew similar criticism for Geraldine's comments in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: A lot of the humor in the show does this. Alice learning as an adult that her pet budgie Carrot did not keep miraculously resurrecting, but in fact was replaced every time by a new budgie? Genuinely heartbreaking. The fact that all of them are named Carrot? Hilarious.
  • Awesome Music: The theme song, which is a beautiful choral rendition of Psalm 23. It sounds less like a television theme and more like an actual hymn. This is because it was: Howard Goodall had set Psalm 23 to music in all seriousness (although better known as a comedy composer he also composes a good deal of religious music), and then repurposed it. It works as a microcosm of the show treating Geraldine's religious devotion seriously even amidst the pandemonium surrounding her.
  • Edited for Syndication:
    • Pretty much every TV version of "Celebrity Vicar" removes the final scene where Hugo performs his simple but sweet act at the gala, where he recites the lyrics of "Let It Be Me" for Alice to mark their imminent wedding (leading to his earlier trouble deciding what to do at the gala becoming an Orphaned Reference).
    • References to Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile have been removed following their exposures as sex offenders, as was a reference to Jill Dando following her murder in 1999.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Alice believes that her pet budgie, Carrot, is the same budgie that she had as a child despite his repeated deaths and "resurrections" into bodies that look entirely different. Of course, this would be plausible to a Cloudcuckoolander who is an avid fan of Doctor Who...
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Owen is made a godparent of Hugo and Alice's baby, whilst Frank and Jim are made "God-grandparents" because they "probably won't live much longer". As it happened, Roger Lloyd-Pack (Owen) passed away in 2014, followed by Emma Chambers (Alice) in February 2018, John Bluthal (Frank) in November 2018, and Trevor Peacock (Jim) in March 2021. Made worse by "The Vicar in Lockdown" specials in late 2020, which revealed that Alice had died in-universe, while Frank and Owen were still alive.
    • In the "Merry Christmas" special David claims that he's been keeping a special batch of champagne in storage for Alice's funeral but notes she's in robust health. Emma Chambers ended up passing away four years before Gary Waldhorn who played David.
    • The opening of "A Wholly Holy Happy Ending" has Jim remarking how he's having difficulty remembering things that have been happening recently. His actor, Trevor Peacock, was diagnosed with dementia two years later in 2009.
    • Casual namechecks of Rolf Harris and Jill Dando, as well as Geraldine's reference to Top of the Pops in the pilot can be viewed this way, ever since Dando's murder in 1999, Harris' conviction for paedophilia in 2014, and Jimmy Saville's postmortem revelation as a serial sex offender in 2012.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Not that it wasn't funny to begin with, but French and Saunders, the sketch show in which Dawn French (star of The Vicar of Dibley) and her comedy partner Jennifer Saunders first achieved real fame, had a sketch in which Dawn French dresses up in an over the top vicar's costume (complete with buckteeth and dandruff) and claims she has been cast as "TV's first female comedy vicar," not long before being cast as Geraldine, who may indeed be the first (or most famous) female comedy vicar.
    • Richard Armitage getting punched in the face during his wedding in Geraldine's Dream Sequence is funny enough, but somehow even funnier when you recall that the exact same thing happened to him in his aborted wedding to Marian on Robin Hood.
    • Geraldine's casual name drop of Gordon Brown as an ex-boyfriend in a 1994 episode became gradually funnier after Labor gained power in 1997 and Brown himself became Prime Minister in 2007.
  • Hollywood Homely: Averted with Roger Lloyd-Pack as Owen. Lloyd-Pack wasn't exactly an unattractive guy and Geraldine makes it clear that the reason she's not attracted to Owen is because of his disregard for personal hygiene.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Hugo and Alice's wedding is interrupted by a woman who storms in with a marriage certificate, insisting that the groom is already married to her. Hugo turns around in shock, at which point she says: "Oops, wrong church!" and slips away again.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Some of the actors in bit parts on the show, who've since made bigger names for themselves. For example,
    • Skins fans will recognize Tristan, the hunky BBC cameraman played by Peter Capaldi, as Sid Jenkins's dad, The Thick of It fans as Malcolm Tucker, and finally nearly everyone as the Twelfth Doctor.
    • Mel Giedroyc appeared in "The Christmas Lunch Incident" as Alice’s sister long before hosting The Great British Bake Off (before Channel 4 got the rights to it).
    • Miranda Hart of Miranda (2009) pops up as a dating agency official and Lord Grantham as the minister who officiates over Geraldine's wedding.
    • At the time the series ended, Richard Armitage was a relatively little-known actor whose career had barely ventured outside supporting roles on British television. After gaining a little more recognition over the next couple of years for his role as Lucas North in Spooks, Armitage became a major international movie star overnight in 2012 thanks to his role as Thorin Oakenshield.
    • In addition to the above, Keeley Hawes is his sister.

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