Posted on 02 August 2010, 14:41

Interviewed James Wood (above), the writer of Rev, on the phone on Saturday. He’s also co-creator with Tom Hollander of the sitcom. I asked him about tonight’s finale, and how the show’s consultant vicars provided ideas for it.

SJ: There’s a sort-of connection to the Mystery Worshipper in the final episode. What’s that about?

JW: Well, the final episode is kick-started by Adam, the Rev, getting a bad review for his sermon from a website we’ve called Godslot. It’s not Ship of Fools, I hasten to add, but it’s ‘an irreverent Christian website’. They give him minus one for his sermon.

Adam is devastated and it plunges him into a crisis about his vocation. I think it’s the best episode by quite some way. It’s quite dark, but also I think it’s the funniest – they’re probably linked – and the ending is quite moving.

When we were writing the epsiode, we knew we wanted our vicar to have a crisis. So we were trying to come up with things that might instigate that, and asked vicars what that might be. One of the vicars said, ‘If my sermon got a bad review online, that would really annoy me.’ And a certain number of vicars find the anonymous card which I think you guys leave really annoying.

SJ: Oh, good.

JW: They hate it. And I’ve given Alex a rant which wasn’t 100 miles off the sort of thing I was hearing from some vicars. The people who didn’t like it said, ‘How dare they not declare their hand, not reveal who they are!’

The full interview is here on Ship of Fools. Tonight’s episode of Rev is at 10pm on BBC Two.