Product Description

The holidays are usually an eventful time for the eccentric residents of Dibley and their chocoholic female vicar, Geraldine. This year proves to be no exception. Alice gets "the wrong end of a very, very long stick" when she spots a supermodel in her undies in the vicarage. It isn't long before the entire village believes that Gerry is not only one of the first female vicars in England, but also one of the first lesbian vicars! In the New Years special, Gerry is determined to mark the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, but the villagers are determined to give her a birthday present she'll never forget - a blind date with one of them!

DVD Features:
Biographies:Cast bios
Other:2005 Comic Relief Sketch "Antiques Roadshow"
Outtakes:"Dibley Defrocked": A hilarious compilation of behind-the-scenes footage and outtakes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7862 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2005-09-27
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 100 minutes

Features

• The holidays are usually an eventful time for the eccentric residents of Dibley and their chocoholic female vicar, Geraldine. This year proves to be no exception. Alice gets "the wrong end of a very, very long stick" when she spots a supermodel in her undies in the vicarage. It isn't long before the entire village believes that Gerry is not only one of the first female vicars in England, but also

Amazon.com
The Vicar of Dibley fans rejoice! These two hour-long 10th Anniversary episodes rank with the very best. Even though the last full series was 4 years earlier, the cast hasn't lost their fantastic rapport--particularly the delightful chemistry between feisty Vicar Geraldine Granger (Dawn French, French & Saunders) and her sweet-tempered but dimwitted verger, Alice (Emma Chambers, Notting Hill); these two bounce off of each other like a classic comedy duo. The first episode is Christmas-themed and features a contest to write a new Christmas carol and an implausible (yet very funny) visit from amazonian supermodel Rachel Hunter, which leads everyone to believe that Gerry is gay. The other is supposedly a New Year's episode, but it's really about Gerry's impending birthday, speed-dating, and writing a letter to the Prime Minister about world poverty (culminating in a serious and surprisingly moving plea aimed at the 2005 G8 Summit meeting). As ever, French is the barely-calm center of wildly spinning carousel of village eccentrics and the results are wonderfully funny. Co-written by Richard Curtis (4 Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones' Diary, Love Actually). Also featuring a 14-minute mini-episode created for Comic Relief, also excellent. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

The Vicar Loses Faith
After a several-year hiatus, the creative team and, remarkably enough, the whole original cast, return to Dibley, the little town that never says die. Except it's approaching dead.

The popularity of this show was originally based on its essentially upbeat, positive attitude and genial self-deprecation at a time when many sitcoms were descending into thirty-minute volleys of insults. So why is so much of the humor in these two episodes based on David slapping down Alice? Is it really funny that he fantasizes about his daughter-in-law's death? Are we amused to see Geraldine drunk in the pulpit, snarking at parishoners in the pews? Is the show really improved by personality clashes that amount to little more than volleys of darts back and forth between the principals?

There are some good concepts underlying the episodes. For example, in the Christmas episode, the village gets the idea in their heads that Geraldine is homosexual. Wow, what a great and timely concept! Just imagine the wacky hilarity as a small English village comes to grips with a lesbian in the pulpit! Go on, just imagine it! Are you imagining it? Good for you, because you've put more effort into the idea than the creative team did. They throw this sharp, fertile idea out, then sweep it aside almost as soon as it finds play.

These episodes aren't a total wash. The New Year's episode is particularly touching, comprising as it does an appeal to the G8 leaders to stop fiddling while Rome burns and do something about global poverty. Though perhaps a touch maudlin, this episode provides an appropriate extension of the characters into a real issue that Christians have failed to come to grips with. This is a very, very good use of the characters and their environment.

The special features are also worth watching. Of the content on the DVD, perhaps the best is a short sketch of the show done for Comic Relief. Though only fifteen minutes long, it's a good capsule of the characters, their conflicts, and the show's potential for social good and for touching interactions. This is why we fell in love with the series in the first place. There's also a gag reel, Dibley Defrocked. We get to see the actors riff on their lines, improvise short scenes in character, and mug for the camera. And it's all surprisingly sharp and witty. Perhaps if the creative team had trusted their actors more, they might have had a pair of episodes worthy of the lingering memory of the original series.

This DVD is for fans of the original series only. Newbies will find it slow, disjointed, and wearing; it depends too heavily on our memory of the characters and their quirks more than on actually developing new insights. Those already invested in the show will find these episodes fairly trying, but there's enough to like, and it has its high points. Just don't confuse this with the original show, or you'll only be disappointed.

Ehhh...not so good...
After loving all the "Dibley" series and specials and even traveling to Turville, where they filmed the exteriors for the series, I eagerly awaited the new specials. I thought it would be wonderful to see the whole gang reunited, but all I felt was a massive wave of disappointment.

The characters are more chariactures and do not act as they should: I'm sorry, but Geraldine sticking her whole HEAD into a chocolate fountain? Not something she would do. The cup of chocolate, yes. The "baptism by Cadbury"? Not her at all. Alice and Hugo offering a threesome to Geraldine? Nuh-uh. Nope. No way.

Buy these ONLY if you're a die-hard fan, like me. As it is, however, I doubt I'll be watching these again unless the rest of my "Dibley"s get destroyed. I'm sad that Richard Curtis sank so low.

Would be nice to have the vicar back-she's nowhere to be seen here...
I was so looking forward to these specials. I really miss the series, was thrilled to find that the 2 specials had been produced and would be released. After seeing them, though, I can't help but think they should have left well enough alone and ended VofD with the final series episode. The characters have lost all charm here and almost everyone seems just to be going through the motions. It's beyond obvious that most of the actors have moved on and really weren't interested in returning to Dibley. The jokes and plot lines are simplistic and common -- almost like the blandest of U.S. sitcoms. That kind of silly. The most disappointing thing was that Geraldine seems to have disappeared altogether. In her place is a vicar lacking in all the depth, charm and humor of her former self. I don't know if it was the writers, French or whomever, but I would rather not have seen Geraldine in this way. One of the things I loved about VofD was that Geraldine was this great, complex, compassionate female character. In the specials, she's reduced to being a totally neurotic, desperate-for-a-husband,depressive, pre-menopausal twit who doesn't care about Dibley or her church any longer. You get the feeling she thinks she's wasted her life away over the last 10 years. She's become vapid and stupid. It betrays the positive thread that ran through the entire series. It's a sad swan song for a great character. I'm surprised Dawn French agreed to even play her this way.

The specials brought the reminder that VofD seemed to be losing some steam even in the last series or so of the regular show. The humor got cruder, less witty, less "smart." The characters were becoming caricatured and were losing some of their quirky charm even then. I think it was a sign that it was time to end. As much as I'd love for VofD to go on forever, I think that unless it can keep the magic of its first seasons intact, its time is done. More specials like these would just be depressing.