Art met reality when Guardian writer and London vicar Giles Fraser went to interview the actors Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman, who play the vicar and his wife in the BBC2 sitcom Rev, which launches its third series on Monday night. Fraser, a frequent broadcaster and former columnist for the Church Times, was surprised when Hollander revealed the inspiration behind one of the less attractive characters in the comedy: a media-savvy vicar. Hollander, who plays the show’s lead character, Adam Smallbone, “tells me something I’d prefer not to know,” Fraser writes in the Radio Times. “One of Rev’s characters is actually based on me. But not the loveable, kindly Adam. Rather, the slippery, self-pitying, bibulous, untrustworthy and arrogant media vicar, the Re