Hallelujah! The Complete Collection

Although the DVD box labels this 1983-84 Yorkshire Television series a “British Comedy Classic,” that accolade is a considerable exaggeration. More accurately dubbed “mildly amusing,” Hallelujah! follows a 40-year veteran of the Salvation Army working with an equally devoted new assistant to save souls in northern England. The show's major claim to fame is star Thora Hird—little known in America but a beloved staple of British sitcoms—playing Captain Emily Ridley, who is being pressured to retire at the beginning of the first series of seven half-hour episodes from 1983, but manages to wheedle an assignment to the dreary Yorkshire town of Brigthorpe, where she and Sister Alice (Patsy Rowlands) enlist the aid of a tart-tongued local senior (Rosamund Greenwood) to try to jumpstart the local mission (through counseling sessions, door-to-door collections, seniors' lunches, and a mobile soup kitchen). In the 1984 second (and final) season—also seven episodes—Emily and Alice are transferred again, and Greenwood is replaced by David Daker as a somewhat surly aide, but the stories are still variations on the same theme. Throughout, Hird exhibits well-honed comic timing, managing to make even Ripley's habit of looking toward the heavens and admonishing God amusing, but Dick Sharples' scripts are never much more than genial. In addition to the 14 regular episodes, the set includes the holiday special “A Goose for Mrs. Scratchitt,” which is modeled on Dickens' A Christmas Carol. DVD extras include a text history of the Salvation Army. Optional. (F. Swietek)