Waiting for Godot – but with plot

If the very first scene of Calvary doesn’t immediately draw you in there’s every chance there is something seriously wrong with you and I would urge you to book an appointment with your GP. It is a terrific opening and it takes place in Ireland, in a Catholic church, within the dark, intimacy of a confessional box, as Father James (Brendan Gleeson) listens to a voice from the other side of the partition recounting how he was repeatedly sexually abused by a priest when he was a child. This parishioner wants revenge, but as his abuser is now dead, he will kill Father James instead, in a week, on the beach. What better way, in fact, to get back at the Church than to murder a good priest, an innocent, and on a Sunday too? Father James knows who this person is, while we do not, so it isn’t a whodunnit.