Anglicans come up with a winner

Religion is something I take very seriously.

I go for the Anglicans.

In Dunedin, of course, the Anglicans have always had a strong team, and excellent club rooms, but struggle with the dominance of the Presbyterians.

The Catholics are also well established, and the Baptists and Methodists can't be written off.

In terms of which code I support, I go for the Christians; not because I prefer their interpretation of the rules of the game, but because I actually played for them - in the Anglicans' strip - in the junior grades until I was about 12 years old.

Like many others, as a young player I played off the bench for the Buddhists for a short time, but was never really serious about the game.

Too much training.

Anyway, in the end I drifted away from playing, but if I see a game on television, I watch it, and I go for the Anglicans.

Tonight at 10pm, a new show featuring my team begins on Prime.

Rev tells the story of the Reverend Adam Smallbone, an Anglican priest recently moved to St Saviour in the Marshes in East London.

Rev Smallbone is faced with a series of moral challenges as, in the beginning at least, he deals with a tiny congregation in an area with myriad social issues.

Rev is a comedy, by the way.

The vicar's wife, Alex, has her own career as a solicitor.

She is played by Olivia Colman, an actress who was excellent as Sophie Chapman in Peep Show, and who appeared in The Office.

Another regular on the show is Steve Evets, who plays heavy drinking lost soul and devoted parishioner Colin.

The really, really interesting thing, if you are a cool person, is that Evets was introduced to Mark E. Smith of The Fall in the mid-1990s, with the result he performed poetry at Fall gigs.

The Fall, of course performed a legendary concert in Christchurch in the early 1980s, legendarily supported by the Clean.

But I digress.

Rev explores the themes facing inner city churches, and in episode one Rev Smallbone faces a flood of new parishioners.

Sadly, their religious fervour is motivated by a desire to join the local church school, following rumours it received an excellent Ofsted report, evidently similar to our ERO reports.

''The school whores will be queuing up to prove they are Christians," the Rev is told.

Rev is quietly funny, in a way quality humour and quality shows are funny.

Tom Hollander does a good job as the slightly wayward, slightly heavy drinking, but good hearted Rev Smallbone.

Well worth watching.

 

 

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