I was looking around for a nice, comfy British show about a vicar. That's how this popped up on my radar.
The premise is a nice one. A kindly middle aged vicar having a mid-life crisis takes on a church in a "troubled" parish to get some life back into his bones.
Only... that doesn't happen till the second the series. The first series is about his struggles with his original parish, including the bullying old curate who makes him do things he doesn't want to do.
This means that the first season seems stuck on one issue - the arguments about him going to the new parish. A will he or won't he scenario, that is already a forgone conclusion because of the main premise.
What really annoys, however, is the wife of the kindly vicar, who is as supportive of her husband and his plight as a wall full of razor blades. The woman is constantly angry at him for wanting to take on the challenge of a new parish, as her life is too comfortable at the old one.
This is a constant thing throughout season one. The wife is constantly shouting and screaming at him, getting angry and annoyed and conspiring with the kids to keep him at the old parish.
The very same parish that he hates so much. The man is beaten and downtrodden, at one point saying he has very little pride or faith left in himself or even God.
I get not wanting to move... but perhaps, maybe, the woman could be a tad supportive of her terminally depressed husband?
Perhaps she could put her ideas of a "comfortable" existence aside so that the poor man doesn't end up killing himself in a couple years?
This makes the wife insufferable, obstinate, and combative, as she has no empathy for her downtrodden husband. The man doesn't only want a "challenge", he wants to find the will to live again. And he sees helping people in a troubled parish as the only way to do that.
And his wife is so against that mostly selfless act. So content is she with her little cottage in a small English village and her life of doing mostly nothing that she's willing to let her husband suffer the bullying and complete lack of anything interesting.
It really got to me. Especially since the woman is so unwilling to compromise.
If she had just been a tad more supportive of the poor man, who is obviously clinically depressed and close to suicidal (a mortal sin for his ilk, I'll remind you).
And she has nothing really to fight about. Except comfort. She does nothing useful at the old parish. She doesn't do charity or anything that helps the community. She just stays at home being useless.
This constant issue is exacerbated by the length of time it takes our vicar to even GET to the new parish. So, by the time season 2 rolls around, the wife has become an awful person that ruins the show.
Watch it if you can stand a selfish moron shouting amongst the gentler moments. But if you can't, avoid.
