Rev - the Reviews roundup

An outpouring of articles and blogs has greeted the end of Rev., almost enough material for a new series? Here's a few I've read, if there are any good ones missing, please add them in the comments.

James Mumford in the Guardian, 'a secular take on the sacred' that undermines what the church is

really about

Al Barrett from inner city Birmingham, watched 'the Easter morning gathering of the cracked, the broken and the divided' and found it close to home.

Wildgoosechasing found the show affirmed what the church is about, a place where broken people can be honest about their failings

Sam Norton noted how Adam's quest to save the building loomed over the whole series: a question which looms over the whole CofE. It's not without significance that the church where the series was filmed is itself facing bankruptcy after spending £1/2m in the last 2 years simply on maintenance. (Just read about how king Hezekiah had to destroy the statue of a snake Moses had made in the desert. It was made to bring healing, but had become a snare as people had forgotten what it was originally there for, so it was best to break it to pieces. Made me wonder...)

David Robertson: safe to say he's not a fan, the vicar is a social worker 'if God did not exist then Rev would make perfect sense.' "Why is it that every BBC sitcom which features a church has to feature a dying church?" (good point)

Christian Research asked some questions of Christians who'd watched the programme, and found that 63% of viewers would attend a church led by Adam Smallbone

Great summary from Emma of the Easter episode, which truly was superb. 

Irene at eyebelieve on whether Rev was just 'nice' - or whether this is Christian sacrifice in action, going out of your way to welcome the sinner and build bridges. 

Robert Fairclough on the 'sensitivity and realism' of the series. 

Steve Holmes at Fulcrum, comparing and contrasting with Camerons 'Christian Britain'.

The Blog of Kevin has some good posts reflecting on previous series.

Update: Ian Paul has an excellent piece on what Rev says about clergy vulnerability, and notes that there's not much scope for comedy in a growing church. Several links there to other pieces, including Marcus Green's powerful reflections on his own breakdown and how that connected (and didn't) with how Adam was portrayed. 

For myself, I enjoyed it overall, thought the penultimate episode was brilliant, and wasn't quite sure about the final ending. 'You won't let me go apparently, is this what resurrection is?' Um, part of it perhaps, but the final show was more about vocation than resurrection. Whilst this sort of drama requires a small cast of characters in order to work (think Dibley, Father Ted), that means you'll never see a BBC drama on the church with a full building. Sadly, it doesn't look like they're able to give a fair portrayal of evangelicals either, both vignettes in the series (Roland in this one, and the youth church leader in the first series) were unsympathetic. 

Christian Research asked if people would have attended this church, I'd have been interested to know if it made people want to pray more. In the end, what we do as Revs is help people to draw closer to God: homeless, hung-up, paedophiles, pharisees, and all the other normal everyday sinners like ourselves. 

And if nothing else, there's now a great DVD resource available for clergy training.

Coldplay Mylo Xyloto: Has God Left the Garden?

With Viva La Vida I was hopeful that Chris Martin was evolving into a subtler version of Bono, with various hints at faith throughout the lyrics. I've been enjoying Mylo Xyloto whilst trying to work out what he's singing about this time, and the answer seems to be 'not a great deal'. The lyrics are mostly pretty vague, and its rather odd hearing a global superstar band singing about the joys of being an outsider, whether its the graffiti artist (Hurts Like Heaven), stealing a car to go and get drugs (Charlie Brown), or 'Us Against the World'.

This latter track has the most biblical/spiritual imagery, and at the same time illustrates very well how it's used: for effect rather than for meaning.

Oh, morning, come bursting, the clouds amen
Lift off this blindfold, let me see again
And bring back the water that your ships rode in
In my heart she left a hole

The tightrope that I'm walking just sways and ties
The devil as he's talking with those angel's eyes
And I just want to be there when the lightning strikes
And the saints go marching in

And sing, slow-owow-owow-owow-it down
Through chaos as it swirls, it's us against the world

Like a river to a raindrop I lost a friend
My drunken has a Daniel in a lion's den
And tonight I know it all has to begin again
So whatever you do, don't let go

And if we could float away, fly up to the surface
And just start again and lift off before trouble
Just erodes us in the rain, just erodes us in the rain
Just erodes us, and see roses in the rain


Now this could be Coldplays way of saying they're longing for the second coming to deliver them from a world where Satan, disguised as an angel of light, reigns through chaos. Or it could be a vague meditation on feeling bereft because of some unnamed woman who's broken his heart. We've seen this before: e.g. the Roman cavalry choirs of Viva La Vida: sounds significant, means....... ??

The other most overtly spiritual lyric on the album, UFO, could also be taken either way.
Lord I don't know which way I am going
which way the rivers gonna flow
It starts like a prayer, but doesn't really get very far. There's talk about sunlight streaming through the holes in the sky ripped by bullets, which if you're that way inclined could link to Romans 8 about all things working together for good, or Revelation where God makes all things new. But those links are in the mind of the listener, not in the words themselves.

The whole CD has plenty of aspirations and 'up' language: to 'heaven', 'paradise', cathedrals in the heart, flying up to the surface (see above), being 'up with the birds' etc., and it closes with the line 'good things are coming our way', but nothing to suggest why. With the final implosion of Oasis, maybe Coldplay are now trying to fill the gap in the market for optimistic rock songs. In many ways this mirrors the music: just as language is used for effect, not content, Mylo Xyloto is more of a sound than a collection of tunes. I found it harder to identify particular songs (with the exception of Paradise or the superb Princess of China) during early listens, or the overall flow of the album. Like the colourful but messy artwork, Mylo Xyloto is rich in musical colour, but it's a bit harder to identify particular shapes, either to the music, or to the words. The lack of a full set of lyrics with the CD maybe indicates that Coldplay don't really want to draw attention to their lyrics, and don't set as much store by them as some of their fans.

Which is a shame really. I enjoy challenging lyrics, that have a bit of depth or meaning to them. Whilst U2 continue to try to say something through their music, I wonder if Coldplay have given up. The album title, after all, doesn't mean anything. (It also means they get Google all to themselves!) Given their support for Oxfam and other good causes, that's a missed opportunity. Yes it's 4 blokes having fun making music, and perhaps I should be happy with that - it's good music after all. Is it wrong to want more?

PS the post title is a reference to Cemetaries of London, on Viva La Vida "I saw God come in my garden but I don't know what He said/for my heart it wasn't open." But you knew that already.

'Rev' iew

Saw 'Rev' last night on BBC2, there's clearly been enough water under the bridge in Dibley Village Green for a new TV vicar sitcom. Here are some of the reviews in blogland so far:

Orange blogs notes how middle class the sitcom is, despite the setting. More here.
Saintly Ramblings liked it and spotted some inside knowledge by the scriptwriters
'More real than Dibley' says Paul Roberts. But then so are most things...
Kevin Scott
onetimothyfour sees a blend of stereotypes and decent research
Rectory Musings 'so rare to see vicars portrayed this accurately and sensitively'
Tracing Rainbows didn't like it
Thoroughly Good Blog did.

Update: thumbs up from Suite 101 and TV Pixie, and the Guardian discusses whether it's ok to fancy your vicar. Depends what she looks like, I suppose.

To which I'd add:
 - It's great to have a TV vicar with something resembling an ordinary prayer life, we haven't had that since Don Camillo. Tom Hollanders part was less of a caricature than some of the others (I loved the slimy archdeacon), and I look forward to seeing it develop.
 - The bad language wasn't necessary, but at the same time there's an attempt to put across the 'vicars are human too' point of view. How many clergy cheered when he shouted at the builders?
 - The scenarios are overblown, but mostly recognisable.
 - I'd love to get the clip where all the new families turn up in church - complete with takeaway coffee, Nintendo DS etc., and have to fumble with hymn books, standing/sitting/kneeling and an array of strange behaviour - and show it to every church leader in the CofE. And every other church for that matter.
 - It's trying harder than Dibley to be thought provoking and less hard to be outrageous/funny.
 - Pretty well researched. My concern is that it's so well researched that only Anglican insiders will 'get' some of the jokes, and everyone else will go 'huh?' (update: judging by the reviews from non-church blogs, perhaps my concern is unfounded.)
 - Tuning in again next week

Review: Marcus Brigstocke 'God Collar'

Comedian Marcus Brigstocke is now well into his God Collar tour, a 1 man show with 1 main topic. As a preacher who struggles to hold people's attention for 10 minutes, I'm repeatedly struck how, through the medium of comedy, we're happy to listen to ideas and arguments being developed for a couple of hours. As long as there's a regular punchline, audiences can still think. Well over 2 hours of Brigstocke on Sunday night in Yeovil was a good workout for both the mind and the diaphragm.

And Brigstocke has certainly been thinking. "I have a God-shaped hole, but none of the available deities seem to fit." Much of the routine is about reasons not to believe - religious wars ("religion and war are like Ant and Dec, you never see them apart."), misogyny, obsession with rules, and so on. But at the same time Brigstocke is very honest about his desire to believe, and his conviction that there's something more to life than just reason ("sometimes I'd rather be happy than right"). The second half is quite personal, talking about his experience of family, children and bereavement, and the encore turned into a 30 minute Q&A session with the audience, giving Brigstocke the chance to land some precise blows on global warming and Top Gear.

It's an excellent show, if you can cope with a few crude bits. Along the way there is a pop at everyone from IPhone users to Nestle. Brigstocke is nothing if not even handed, from Muslims - "bags are for things, not people, grow up!" - to atheists "you're not cleverer than everybody else", there's something to annoy just about everyone. He points out the weirdness of agnostics who haven't really given the massive question of God any thought, and gives a superb summary of the difference between Protestants and Catholics.

There was plenty of challenging material. Noahs Ark, that famous childrens story, provided the lead in to a discussion of how many people in the Bible get killed by God. As for the rainbow as a reminder to God not to destroy the earth "if there's one thing worse than a murderous deity, it's a scatterbrained murderous deity." This is one Christians have wrestled with for centuries, ever since Marcion carved up the Bible in the second century to leave out the nasty bits.

More positively, Brigstocke spoke about 'Goodbye' (= 'God be with you') being a 'beautiful' thing, and how things like children and death are times when the God-shaped hole is more obvious. Talking of the death of his grandfather, and his best friend, Brigstocke muses on how comforting the idea of an afterlife would be, and then reminds us that this is exactly the same idea behind 9/11. Coincidentally, the comfort of an (imaginary?) afterlife is also at the root of Ricky Gervais's plot in The Invention of Lying.

Lots of other good stuff, I'm tempted to quote lots of the jokes but that would spoil it for anyone who might be tempted to catch him. I'd recommend it. It made me laugh, made me think, and makes me glad that the man behind We Are History is still going. The fact he's prepared to ruthlessly skewer Richard Dawkins probably helped! He'd done his homework on the local area too - which might have something to do with the fact he went to school in Bruton. On the downside, some pretty crude sexual references, and I'm not entirely sure that a bloke who habitually exposed himself to others is anything to admire.

As a Christian, I felt he was pretty fair about Christianity, with one or two exceptions, and most of his jokes about it were ones I wished I'd thought of first ("Christians are more obessed about gays than gays are"). He talked of having Christian friends and plenty of conversations with them, and I could believe it. This is the kind of atheist I'd be happy to have a pint with. Intelligent, fair, honest, questioning.

Coldplay at Wembley, 18th September

What would you discharge yourself from hospital for? For me it was 2 things: a wedding today (brilliant sunshine, fantastic couple) and Coldplay at Wembley yesterday, a slightly late 40th birthday present, but well worth the wait.

Call it music therapy, but it was a calculated risk to sign myself out of Yeovil hospital on Thursday night (long story, another post) to trek up to London yesterday. Tube in from Amersham, and after overshooting Wembley on the first train, we finally found it: there was Wembley Way and the iconic arch. After running the gauntlet of ticket touts (they were replaced by mounted police for the journey back) and riding the escalators to level 5, we found ourselves 2 rows from the front of the top balcony, level with what would have been the half way line, but instead was a couple of lighting stacks and some strange yellow objects under tarpaulins (ballons, released during Yellow).

3 support acts - White Lies were noisy for the 1 song we heard, Girls Aloud suffered from a) not having much stage to play with b) being on in daylight, so no chance of lighting effects and c) a dreadful sound mix, with drums, muffly bass, voices and not much else. They had a go, and you had to feel sorry for the vision mixer who tried (and mostly failed) to keep up with which one of them was singing at the time. Call the Shots was great, but no quantity of faux-seductive pouting could make up for the sound quality. We were 100m away, so it probably sounded better at pitch level. Shame, we were really looking forward to seeing them.

Next came Jay-Z, cue time for me to go and queue for some food: if I want to be shouted at by grown men then I'll take up refereeing for kids football. But no food: somehow Wembley hadn't worked out that if people are there from 4pm - 11pm, they might want to eat a meal during that time. None of the amply staffed food outlets had anything to sell except £6 pizza slices, despite advertising fish and chips and all sorts of other stuff. Back to Jay-Z, who wasn't that bad for a rap artist (you can tell I ain't part of the 'hood), great band behind him, and a woman with an incredible voice who came on for 1 song. It's probably a global no.1, but the days when I taped the top 40 are long gone.

Hats off to the roadies, who did some very quick changeovers between the support acts: we got 45m each of Girls Aloud and Jay-Z, who finished his act by singling out people in the crowd to pay complements to - big job when 70,000 are watching. Then not long after 9 the sound system switched to Oasis (Acquiesce), then the Blue Danube Waltz, then down went the lights and here we go.

Having not been to a major gig for years, it was spectacular. The sound was fantastic, the lighting was awesome, and if Coldplay were tired at the end of several months touring they didn't show it. The instrumental Life in Technicolour was followed by a series of singalong favourites: Clocks, Yellow, Violet Hill, In My Place, Glass of Water. Very clever bit in Yellow, where Chris Martin 'asked' Simon Cowell to comment on the quality of the crowds singing, and showed clips of some of his X Factor put-downs. Martins sense of fun and joy is infectious, and despite the fairly limited banter between songs, and the massive venue, everyone felt involved.

The second part of the set did some 'interesting' things: a techno medley (God Put a Smile on Your Face, and Talk) from the end of one of the walkways, followed by an acoustic set on a small stage towards the back of the pitch, where the band were joined by actor Simon Pegg on harmonica. The cover of Billie Jean was unexpected and good for a giggle, but there was a bit of a loss of momentum. Then back to the mainstage for a rib-jangling Politik and Lovers in Japan, which had everyone on their feet, and confetti butterflies being sprayed across the stadium. The encore of The Scientist/Life in Technicolour 2 finished with fireworks, and a happy crowd singing the 'whoa oh oh's from Viva la Vida all the way down Wembley Way.

Discovered today that Oxfam were shadowing the tour as Coldplays special guests, but there wasn't anything at the show yesterday to highlight that. Their CD notes regularly encourage support of things like Fair Trade, but there was no attempt by Coldplay to use the stage as a platform for causes. Personally I'd have been thrilled if they had done, there's no need for U2 to corner the market in this. We also missed out on our free giveaway CD on the way out, so I'll just have to listen to LeftRightLeftRight on Spotify instead.

Minor quibbles: bit too much swearing from Chris Martin, and I'd have loved to hear more tracks from X&Y rather than Simon Peggs harmonica, but hey, they're a world renowned band and I'm not, and there's probably a good reason for that. On another occasion I'll probably do a 'compare and contrast' on corporate singing between Coldplay, weddings and church, but this post is long enough already....

Other links
here's the setlist
Youtube clips
lots of great photos on Flickr, from where I got the one above.
Review on BBC6