A less-than-qualified and far-from-perfect priest is mistakenly named the new pope. As the pontiff, he must deal with Vatican corruption, the Mob and the reappearance of his old lover.
Like a lot of Peter Richardson's back catalogue I feel it's a "nice idea, shame about the rest of it". I have a strange relationship with Peter Richardson. I feel like there's a man of ideas, many of them wonderful and a lot of theme elevated by the people working in them. However I often feel sometimes his creations end up feeling a bit lacklustre. For every The Strike there's a Susie or War. The Pope Must Die is more towards the Susie side of the Peter Richardson spectrum. There's a really neat premise at the heart of it. The Pope passes away and due Ade Edmondson mishearing who is voted as the new Pope accidentally writes the name of an incompetent priest who is now promoted several ranks above his capabilities. Bam! Good premise! There's also a political angle at its core about the desperate need to reform the Catholic Church. Yet beyond the initial hook there's a fairly big standard and tedious story about the Mafia. It's like there was no real attempt to flesh out the or
