BBC Two comedy, Rev., is about to receive a solid gold injection of acting talent in the shape of Richard E. Grant and Ralph Fiennes.

The comedy series which follows the trials of an inner-city vicar was granted a second series back in April but is now shaping up to be a better viewing prospect altogether.

Richard will play a city banker, Marcus, while the Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville returns to take on the role of the smarmy Roland Wise.

Amanda Hale, who starred alongside Richard in “The Crimson Petal and the White”, will also appear as a bright young curate called Abi Johnston.

Fiennes is to play a “senior clergyman” called Ralph who advises the main character, the Reverend Adam Smallbone, played by Tom Hollander, about how to extricate himself from a “sticky situation”, a BBC source has revealed. Fiennes is understood to have been personally recruited by Hollander, an old friend, who persuaded him to sign up to the second series of a show which attracted more than two million viewers for each episode in series one and was one of the highest rated new comedies in the history of BBC2.

The glamour of the new cast list is a far cry from the first series, which opened with very little fanfare last year but which attracted a legion of passionate fans, including Britain’s top vicar, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Rowan Williams said the series was “really rather good” and revealed “something about the continuing commitment of the church to run down and challenging areas.”
Collecting the South Bank Show Award for best comedy last year, Hollander said: “We wanted to define ourselves in opposition to the cliché of a country vicar, partly because we wanted to depict England as it is now.

“We wanted the complications of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic inner-city, where everything is much harder.”