‘THE NEW VICAR’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

In this episode, Hyacinth has invited the new vicar and his wife to ‘tea and light refreshments’ at her house. But plans go wrong, when Onslow and Daisy turn up in their car to tell Hyacinth that Daddy’s run off with a gypsy. Rose also wants to commit suicide and to be buried in mummy’s wedding dress.

I laugh every time whenever I see Onslow’s car arriving outside Hyacinth’s house. The car exhaust explodes once it arrives. It’s a running gag during the TV series and it never bores. It was funny when Onslow met the gypsy at the front door to his house and his reaction to Daisy talking about ‘bad luck’.

The gypsy is played by Eileen Davies who says “Buy something from the gypsy woman and be lucky!” I don’t know where the gypsy went after going inside Onslow’s house, apart from leaving and being followed by Daddy afterwards. There’s also this passerby played by Jill O’Hare in the episode here. 🙂

Rose soon turns up in black mourning clothes at Hyacinth’s house. It was funny when Hyacinth had phone calls for orders for a Chinese takeaway. She keeps telling the person on the phone, “No, you cannot have three of 22 and a portion of 19 with chips! This is not the Chinese takeaway!” So funny!

Hyacinth also gets in touch with her son Sheridan who asks for money and seems to be in ‘needlework’. By that, I mean he seems to deal drugs. It’s also implied Sheridan may be gay but Hyacinth is unaware of it. It’s so fascinating Hyacinth doesn’t pick up on the goings-on with her son.

Jeremy Gittins makes his debut appearance as the Vicar in ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ with Marion Barron as the Vicar’s Wife. It was funny when Hyacinth put the teapot in the Vicar’s hands and it was piping hot. Rose manages to seduce the Vicar in the episode, which becomes recurrent in the series.

Before ‘Keeping Up Appaearances’, Jeremy Gittins played a Tharil in the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘Warriors’ Gate’. He didn’t have many lines to say in that, but he could’ve had if the story’s audiobook was filmed instead. Jeremy Gittins also starred in ‘All in Good Faith’ with Richard Briers. 🙂

This second episode of the series was great to watch and is very enjoyable, enabling us to get to know more about the characters as well as be introduced to the new vicar and his wife. I find Onslow very funny indeed and Geoffrey Hughes delivers a great down-to-earth performance as him here.

‘The New Vicar’ rating – 8/10