Vicar of Dibley lockdown specials

Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere but I did a search and couldn't see it anywhere! It's also turned into quite a lengthy post...

The Vicar of Dibley returned for the first of three lockdown specials tonight and there were a few presentation-type things that caught my eye, starting with the butchering of the opening titles!

They're using an organ version of the traditional theme rather than the proper version with the choir, which seems a bit odd. However, as the specials immediately follow repeats of classic episodes on their broadcast airings, perhaps it's to add a bit of variety or to distinguish from the older episodes?

They've also done something very strange to the credits in the opening sequence. Dawn French's name appears in a similar fashion to how it used to, before a much lower resolution version of the Vicar of Dibley logo appears (and a slightly crisper 'in lockdown' caption below the logo). Whilst the source material for the titles is undoubtedly pretty soft SD footage, this looks especially bad and is doubly strange when you consider that they've rebooted the show for one-off specials enough times now to produce a set of titles that looks okay in HD!

Looking on YouTube, there's a Comic Relief special from 2013 where the titles look perfectly acceptable, whereas last night's offering looks a bad mock! I wonder who signed off on that?! In the below comparison the Comic Relief special titles are on the left, whilst the titles from last night are on the right:



Finally, I was interested to see that Dawn French's character was sat in the same living room set as used on the show all those years ago, which i don't think was something I saw in any press photos released ahead of the episode airing.

I initially thought it was just a well done green screen (although why they'd have photographed the original set from the angle of a webcam atop a laptop on the desk at the side of the lounge at the time I don't know!), but later in the episode the sofa is moved very slightly by French, leading me to reconsider this.

I'm therefore wondering how they've shot it - I don't suppose anyone knows? I guess the sofa could be the only real prop in the space, with the rest indeed just a good green screen? It seems overkill to rebuild an entire set for a short series of 10 minute specials. And presumably they've not been storing the struck set somewhere all this time, just in case they needed it again? In a previous special there was a scene set in the village hall/parish council meeting space, but that looked to me like it might have been a real location, as the original set wouldn't have been built with HD in mind, and therefore probably wouldn't have stood up to scrutiny when shown in HD?

What I found really odd was they scripted the show as if nobody had aged in the 25 years since the show debuted, referring to characters who you would assume by now had probably died, regardless of whether the actor is still alive or not.

Looking on iPlayer to compare myself and I've only just noticed the first series had a full choir doing the theme at the beginning, and everything after using a solo. To be honest the lockdown titles look like a rip from YouTube.

Are they going for the dodgy broadband look?

Even more weirdly, that only seems to apply to Episodes 2, 3, 4 and 6 plus the 1996 Christmas Special!

I couldn't get the bloody theme tune out of my head today at work, then in an act of god the chaplain visited our office during the afternoon as his laptop had given up the ghost!

Yeah the opening titles were unforgivably bad, even non-geeks would've noticed that!

I checked with a scene from 2006 - the set isn't the same, but they've clearly tried to make it look as familiar as possible - same red walls, sofa, green cupboard doors, and the wooden beams.

I wonder whether she's still married? She's back to using Grainger it seems - and we know from a previous special she changed her name previously.

It did feel a bit odd referring to Frank and Owen when we know the actors have died, but I suppose it's not impossible that the characters would still be around, especially as the actor who plays Frank is still alive, and I think he was the oldest of the lot.

John Bluthal who played Frank died two years ago, it's Trevor Peacock who played Jim who's alive but sadly has advanced dementia.

In terms of the set, I remember seeing an article (written before the various actors passed away) where French said that the set (or parts of it) was stowed away in storage incase they did another episode/series/special. It does look slightly different though, so could be new. Don’t think it’s a greenscreen, even with the sofa being real.

The opening titles on the Netflix episodes looked sharper and zoomed in on some occasions. I could tell as i progressed with each episode.

I meant Jim sorry. Didn't realise he had dementia though bless him.

I used to see him in Morrison's in Yeovil a lot - lovely chap. So sad.

Yeah, I noticed the same on a recent re-watch. The producers never took much care over the opening credits as they're often cobbled together/cropped/updated badly between series. So hardly surprising that the most recent effort isn't done very well!