He creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman as his churchwarden, taking in a family being evicted from their illegal encampment, and persuading local landowner Lady Despard to provide food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town.

[4] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Way off target as a satire, the Boultings' latest effort is remarkable chiefly for the amount of schoolboy smut it manages to incorporate, and for the nastiness of its view of people.

Half-a-dozen funny lines, an excellent performance by Peter Sellers, and good ones from Isabel Jeans, Cecil Parker and Brock Peters, don't take the film very far"[5] The Times found it lacking the mild bite and satire of the Boulting-Sellers film I'm All Right Jack[6] An article in Garden History likened the character of Smallwood to that of the 18th century picturesque guru William Gilpin: "The first act of the new reverend is to invite a group of colourful travellers to reside in the vicarage; the second is to convince an old lady to open her house and grounds to all sorts of poor vagabonds, scruffs and vagrants, characters who bring picturesque values to the noble scene.

Eventually, a picturesque economic system based on free donation causes havoc in the village and the nation – the reverend is made a bishop and sent into space, in Britain's first spaceship.

The film revives a character that one can safely imagine as a modern version of Doctor Syntax – cordial, dedicated, stubborn, fearless, not reacting against, but slightly diverging from, the established values of his culture.