Monday, January 09, 2012

Rev: Mystery of Greenbelt Footage Solved

Having seen Tom Hollander and the Rev. crew filming around the Greenbelt festival site last  year, many were expecting footage to crop up in the latest series. But where was it? In the end Rev. Adam Smallbone and Alex (Mrs Vicarage) camped in their front room. Olivia Colman reveals why:

The popularity of the BBC's Rev, in which she plays the wife of Tom Hollander's vicar, Adam Smallbone, has brought a new breed of fan. "We tried to do some guerrilla filming for the series at the Greenbelt religious festival, but in the end we couldn't use any of the footage because it was like being the Stones. We were mobbed by people saying they loved what we had done with Rev. They are normal human beings, after all, and fed up with constantly being portrayed as starchy."

Colman adds that, while she is not a believer, she is happy that the show is good PR for the church. "Adam Smallbone is an everyman: good, kind, worried and troubled. I have enormous admiration for people that do believe. Maybe one day I will take that step."

from an interview in the Observer yesterday.

Lesson: if you see a film crew at your favourite Christian festival, avoid them, otherwise you'll be costing someone some valuable free publicity. Calm down everyone, it's only a TV programme.

Update: I'm now wondering why, after just a few hours, this post has already had more hits than the combined totals of last weeks pieces on depression, pro-euthanasia bias at the BBC, and persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. Isn't Greenbelt all about a social conscience? (ducks)

2 comments:

  1. Poor Rev: "good, kind, troubled and worried" but no gospel to share. I like Rev but I'm not really convinced it's such good publicity for the Church.

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  2. Rev is everything that made and makes me phobic about the c of e I have tried to love. It takes me past gritted teeth to nausea. Jesus, yes. Christianity, just yes. Religion/rev? Nausea.

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