An Island Parish is making a welcome return to our screens with a second series - and according to producer Nigel Farrell, there’ll be one or two surprises.
“We’ll still be following Father Guy’s progress as he settles into the job, as well as Heike the vet and Sam Hicks’s new life on St Agnes,” he told ScillyNews.
“But there will be lots of new stuff too…the decision to build a new school, Radio Scilly, Toby the baker on St Martin’s hoping to take over the island pub, preparations for the trans-Atlantic row in 2008 and lots more.”
Meanwhile, he explained how the storylines in the first series were developed. “The central narrative was obviously the arrival of the new Anglican priest Father Guy Scott.
“Other stories led out of this narrative arc - retired Anglican priests Revs. Donald and Margaret Marr staying on Scilly until Guy’s arrival etc.
“The great thing about Scilly from a programme-maker’s point of view is that almost everything is related, so issues such as the loss of the vet, housing for young people and the fishing industry, are all actually relevant to parish life, so we tried to reflect these too.”
And he defended the show’s makers over concerns from Island Methodists that the series implied Scilly was in a “moral vacuum” since the departure of Rev Julian Ould.
“I know some Methodists were unhappy there wasn’t more coverage of them,” he said.
“But our BBC commission is specifically to do a programme about the Church of England - in the previous Country/Seaside Parish series there was no coverage of Methodists or Roman Catholics, nor Jews, Hindus or Muslims.
“I’m sure there is a good series to be made about churches working together in Britain but that wasn’t our brief.”
The crew from Tiger Aspect are thrilled to be putting together another series and filming will begin immediately. “It’s a great privilege to be able to work in a place like Scilly, particularly in summer,” said Nigel.
An Island Parish is repeated on BBC1 in the early hours of Wednesday mornings (starting this week at 2.55am).