More TV Vicar? Christians on the Telly: The Good, the Bad and the Quirky

Bryony Taylor analyses how Christians are portrayed on TV - starting with 'the Good' ...

Revd Paul Coates – Broadchurch

‘We are hunted down but never abandoned by God.’

The first of these ‘rounded’ characters for us to look at is one not from the world of comedy but from drama. Broadchurch was a critically acclaimed crime drama first screened on ITV in 2013 with a follow up second series in 2015 and starring David Tennant, Olivia Colman and, playing a young curate, Arthur Darvill (previously known for playing Rory in Doctor Who). The series was produced by the same Danish producers of the popular ‘Nordic noir’ crime thriller The Killing and thus reimagined its gritty realism for a British audience and setting.

Part of the intrigue of Broadchurch was in the setting – a remote small town by the sea (filmed in Dorset). The storyline of the first series played on the idea of a small town where everyone knows one another, meaning that everyone could be a suspect in the murder case under investigation: in some respects, a classic crime drama setup but moved into the twenty first century. Of course, we have already seen that if you create an idyllic small town, the church has to be a part of that picture. There is a long pedigree of clergy characters involved in crime storylines – even one of the pieces on a Cluedo board is the Reverend Green. So in this classic crime story updated for a modern world they put an ‘updated modern curate’ character.

Speaking about playing the role, Arthur Darvill, said: ‘It was my first time playing a man of the cloth, and walking around in a dog collar and robes felt kind of weird. I felt a responsibility when in costume; my language certainly cleaned up a bit.’

Darvill betrays something of the public fascination in the clergy being a ‘different breed’ in his use of the archaic phrase ‘man of the cloth’. There is also an assumption that he mustn’t swear (more on that later). That said, the character of Revd Paul Coates is not ‘squeaky clean’. Darvill met with a curate as he researched the role:

‘I went to meet a young vicar before I started filming. He told me that even in the supermarket he is still working, still a representative of God and the community and as such is always there to help people, to listen. You have a responsibility to live your life in a certain way to keep that respect…you are never not on call.’

This is borne out in the programme in a scene where the curate bumps into the mother of the murdered child in a supermarket car park.

The Revd Paul’s character suffers a little from the child abuse scandals that have rocked the church. At one point there is suspicion that because he volunteers at an IT club for boys that he might have inappropriate relationships with them. This, however, rather than an attack on the church is simply portraying the current realities of life as a single male curate. The character also ‘has a past’ – he has had problems with alcohol. So along with the other key characters in the programme he is relatively ‘normal’, ‘one of us’. This is a departure from the one dimensional vicar characters we have seen before.

What is particularly unusual, and heartening for Christians watching the programme, is the key role given to the Revd Paul of bringing the community together in an act of remembrance and worship at the end of the series. The Revd Paul organises a powerful service in church and then on the beach where he has arranged for beacons to be lit along the coast in memory of the murdered boy. Again, this is simply reflecting real life – in nearly all of the recent great tragedies we have seen on the news, the clergy are the people everyone (including news reporters) turn to. It is one area where the church seems to still have (in the mind of the public) a legitimate part to play.

This is an excerpt from More TV Vicar? Christians on theTelly: The Good, the Bad and the Quirky by Bryony Taylor, available now in paperback and eBook priced £9.99.