Father Ted
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Template:Infobox television Father Ted is a 1990s television situation comedy set around the lives of three priests on the fictional extremely remote Craggy Island off the west coast of Ireland. It first aired April 21, 1995 on the UK's Channel 4, and the final episode was broadcast on May 1, 1998. Father Ted was written by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, who also co-created Big Train. All the interior scenes were shot at the LWT studios in London, while all of the location footage was shot in Ireland.
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Synopsis
Three Roman Catholic priests preside over a parish on Craggy Island: Father Ted Crilly, Father Dougal McGuire and Father Jack Hackett. The three live together in Craggy Island's parochial house, along with their manic housekeeper Mrs Doyle, who is hell-bent on forcibly serving tea to all and sundry.
Responsible for the three priests' exile is fierce, uncompromising Bishop Len Brennan. Bishop Brennan makes frequent visits to the island, often to cast his disapproving eye over the three and their backwater parish. The reasons for the priests' exile are hinted at across the several series, and appear to stem from a mixture of incompetence and embarrassing conduct. Fathers McGuire and Hackett were exiled for reasons of stupidity and alcoholism (respectively) which caused severe embarrassment to the Catholic Church. Father Crilly's offences, on the other hand, were somewhat more severe. He is told to have gone to Las Vegas on funds intended to send a sick child to Lourdes. To this day he defends his innocence, claiming that "the money was just resting in my account", and that it was "a perfectly legitimate monetary transfer."
The show also gave birth to many catchphrases that are well known in Ireland and Britain, most notably Mrs Doyle's "Go on, go on" and Father Jack's cursing, with short words including, and usually limited to, "Drink!" "Feck!" "Arse!" and "Girls!" and also the now obligatory response "Careful Now!" to the protest chant "Down with this sort of thing!"
Major characters
Father Ted Crilly
Father Ted Crilly (Dermot Morgan) is the most normal of the priests on the island. He is a bon vivant, exiled to Craggy Island for something referred to only as "That Lourdes Thing." This apparently involved his misappropriating church funds, intended to be used to send a poor child to Lourdes, to go on a gambling trip to Las Vegas. Ted has frequently claimed that the money was "just resting in my account", although Dougal points out "it was resting for a long time Ted... A good long rest". Ted was previously in Wexford, which happens to be the home town of the series producer, Declan Lowney. His greatest desire is to escape Craggy Island and to find a wealthy parish in Las Vegas and a life free of embarrassment. During the prelude of the first episode of the third series he was portrayed as having moved to a parish in Dublin and being finally on the way to achieving his goal. However, some of his expense claims on the accounts of his new parish were challenged, so he was apparently sent back to Craggy Island. Father Ted maintains a longstanding feud with Father Dick Byrne. This has led him into various very ill-judged escapades including once, with Father Dougal, aiming to win the nomination to represent Ireland in "Eurosong '96" (a spoof of the Eurovision Song Contest) with their composition "My Lovely Horse". He also lost a bet with Father Byrne and as a forfeit he had to "kick Bishop Brennan up the arse". Father Ted once described the Great Wall of China as being "so big it can be seen from anywhere in the world". On the orders of Bishop Len Brennan he also tried to ban a blasphemous film. Far from destroying the film's commercial appeal, his inspired protests (including waving signs such as "Down With This Sort of Thing" and "Careful Now") actually caused people to come from as far away as Gdańsk to watch it.
Father Dougal McGuire
Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) is a simple minded soul, in exile for a mysterious incident in Blackrock involving a group of nuns, presumably caused by his stupidity. His inability to grasp the simplest of everyday concepts provides much of the humour in the show. He once owned a rabbit called Sampras (as a reference to noted tennis player Peter Sampras) because of that "whole rabbit/tennis, tennis/rabbit connection". Dougal regularly expresses doubts about the validity of Catholic Orthodoxy, to the degree that he causes Bishop O'Neill to renounce his faith. The Catholic hierarchy, as well as Father Ted, also greatly frown upon Dougal conducting funerals, as one ended up with the hearse on fire and upside down in the hole dug for the grave.
Father Jack Hackett
Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly), is an alcoholic, lecherous, violent and foul-mouthed elderly priest. He is on Craggy Island for all of the above, and is basically incapable of functioning normally as a priest. He spends most, if not all of his time sitting in his chair yelling "FECK! ARSE! DRINK! GIRLS!" or telling everyone to "FECK OFF!!" But once every leap year he is normal on the 29th of February, when he is seen cavorting with rabbits, puppies and children and behaving almost normally. There is also mention of a 'blue nun' incident (blue as in sexually promiscuous, although "Blue Nun" is also a brand of wine), and a wedding that Father Hackett performed was another factor contributing to his banishment to Craggy Island. Ted did once clean him up and teach him two phrases: "YES!" and "THAT WOULD BE AN ECUMENICAL MATTER!" but this education was short-lived. Father Hackett appears to possess limited supernatural powers, such as his ability to determine the vintage of wine merely by the sound of bottles clinking together. Despite this talent, he is not particularly discerning about what he drinks, and in a pinch will happily resort to Toilet Duck and other cleaning fluids. However, he refuses to drink water. The one time in the series he did, he spat it out again. Ted tried to warn him by saying, "No, don't drink that, Father, its..." and Jack finished the sentence by shouting, "FECKIN' WATER!" For Lent he was sober for the first time in twelve years and remembered things such as "CHAIR", "FLOOR" and "CURTAINS", though upon seeing Ted, he remembered, "GOBSHITE!" He also asks "Where are the other two?" since he had been seeing double for so many months/years. However, he couldn't at all figure out what a spoon was. Apparently he has a great fear of being buried alive.
Mrs. Doyle
Mrs Doyle (Pauline McLynn), is the priests' manic housekeeper who is hell-bent on serving tea to all and sundry. She must once have been married though no mention of her husband is ever made, apart from a brief slip of the tongue on her part in "Night of the Nearly Dead". Hospitality, especially serving tea, is her mission in life, as is cleaning the large window in the living room, a task which usually sees her plummet to the ground upon trying to get back down from the sill. She occasionally falls off the roof of the parochial house.
Recurring Characters
Other priests and islanders have recurring roles in the series. Their details are given below. A number of parishioners and other characters appear on the show on a one-off basis. See Father Ted minor characters for a complete list.
Priests
Image:FATHER TED Bishop Leonard Brennan.jpg
Bishop Leonard Brennan
Bishop Len Brennan (Jim Norton), Ted's boss. Len has little patience with Ted and his friends, whom he refers to as "the cast of Police Academy". He also has a terrible phobia of rabbits, due to being stuck in a lift with some once, where they nibbled on his cape and everything. Secretly he has a girlfriend and son living in California.
Father Noel Furlong
Father Noel Furlong (Graham Norton) and his reluctant St Luke's Youth Group, who turn up in uncompromising places such as a tiny caravan and a dark cave. Father Noel is overwhelmingly enthusiastic to the point of being interminable, regaling everyone with songs, having "screeching" competitions in the cave and doing Riverdance in the cramped caravan. Even when buried under a "big pile of rocks" he talks incessantly and cheerfully. His version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was a high point of the series. His youth group eventually ran off to Paraguay. He occasionally turns up without his youth group, for example, on a plane crammed with priests which is rapidly running out of fuel, where he is looking after Father Faye, the Monkey Priest of Killybashangel. He also appeared on an airplane which was one of the if not the only time he seemed to have slightly calmed down, when he found out he was going to die.
Father Larry Duff
Father Larry Duff, a priest with a zest for life who Ted claims is "tremendous fun" around others. Ted often calls Larry for advice on his mobile phone. However, when Ted calls him on his mobile phone, he suffers a horrible accident yet always reappears unharmed in a subsequent episode (much like Kenny McCormick in the animated series South Park). These events include car and skiing accidents, a disastrous donkey derby, a very painful mishap with a stapler, an unlucky incident with a knife thrower, being savaged by a dozen Rottweiler dogs and losing out on a £10,000 prize. He was once arrested by security forces because "a big box of machine guns" were found in a fellow priest's house, with whom he was sharing a car at the time.
Father Dick Byrne
Father Dick Byrne, Ted's opposite number and arch-nemesis on the nearby Rugged Island. Dick is to Ted as The Master is to The Doctor in Doctor Who, and is forever up to no good. In Ted's pithy phrase: "As priests go... he's a really bad priest". He has two colleagues on Rugged Island: Father Jim Johnson and Father Cyril MacDuff, who are sort of equivalents to Jack and Dougal.
Islanders
John and Mary O'Leary
Local shop-owners Mary and John O'Leary who, whilst striving to appear sweetness and light to the clergy, are constantly at each other's throats and make numerous attempts to murder each other.
Tom
Tom (Pat Shortt), a bizarre maniac who nevertheless has a polite tone to friends. He wears a T-shirt on which he claims "I shot JR" (a reference to Dallas, an American soap opera). In the first episode of Father Ted, he confesses to an apparently unconcerned Ted that "I killed a man". He possesses a strange scar on his buttocks, which is never revealed to the audience. Of this scar, Tom proclaims "Would you believe me own dog did that to me?! Doesn't it look like a face?!" A true sign of his insanity is made clear in the original scripts, in which he is the only person on the island to think that Ted and Dougal's Eurovision performance of "My Lovely Horse" is actually good. He does not spare his violent nature from animals. He interprets Ted's request to "take care" of a large family of rabbits as a request to slaughter them with a Japanese Katana, and shoots a crow sitting 3 feet away from him with a shotgun in the first episode.
Production details
Contrary to frequent rumours, Mathews and Linehan did not originally pitch the series to the Irish network RTÉ, but rather offered it directly to Hat Trick Productions and Channel 4 in the UK. Nevertheless, it is a rich irony that what went on to be one of the most popular TV shows in Ireland, performed largely by an Irish cast, and containing so many accurate (albeit comically exaggerated) depictions of national Irish eccentricities, was paid for and shot by a British broadcaster. Somewhat controversially, RTÉ initially did not buy the rights to broadcast the show in Ireland, perhaps for fear of offending more conservative viewers. However, Channel 4 is available on cable and MMDS in very many Irish homes and the show became a hit in Ireland without any help from RTÉ, who eventually responded to the obvious demand and broadcast the show themselves.
The theme tune for the series was written and performed by Neil Hannon's aptly-named band The Divine Comedy, and was later reworked into a song Songs of Love for the album Casanova. (The song Woman of The World from the same album was also offered as a potential theme tune, but rejected.) The band also contributed the ridiculous My Lovely Horse (a B-side on Gin Soaked Boy) used in the episode "Song for Europe", with singer Neil Hannon providing Ted's vocal; and also composed My Lovely Mayo Mammy for the episode "Night of the Nearly Dead" with the character Eoin McLove, as well as various other musical items heard in the show.
Three series and one Christmas special were completed. In addition Morgan and O'Hanlon in character hosted an hour of Comic Relief, during which Kelly and McLynn made brief appearances as Father Jack and Mrs Doyle in one of the routines. Just after the completion of Series 3, Dermot Morgan died of a heart attack, aged 45. As a result, series 3 was first broadcast a week later than originally planned, out of respect for Morgan. Both the writers and co-stars agree that the third series was always intended to be the last, regardless of Morgan's sudden death.
Location shooting for Father Ted was done mostly in County Clare, including locations at Ennis, Kilfenora, Ennistimon, and Kilnaboy. The parochial house is at Glenquin, near Kilnaboy. The cinema featured in 'The Passion Of St Tibulus' is at Greystones, County Wicklow and "The Field", the location for Funland in "Good Luck, Father Ted", is in Portrane, North Co. Dublin. The opening sequence (including shots of the Plassey ship wreck) were filmed over Inisheer - the smallest of the Aran Islands. The interior scenes were filmed in London.
The show is currently being aired on BBC America, and is repeated frequently on Channel 4, E4 and RTÉ Two.
List of episodes
Series 1 (1995)
Image:FATHER TED Down with this sort of thing.jpg
- Good Luck, Father Ted - A film crew offers to interview Ted. He goes to extreme lengths to ensure the other members of the clergy on the island cannot be seen
- Entertaining Father Stone - An unbearably boring, yet inoffensive, priest - Father Stone, pays his annual visit to Craggy Island. The title is a pun on Entertaining Mr Sloane.
- The Passion Of St Tibulus - Bishop Brennan orders the priests to ensure a blasphemous sexually explicit film being shown on the island is a failure.
- Competition Time - Ted, Dougal and Jack all plan to appear, as Elvis, in the All-priests Stars in Their Eyes lookalike contest. Ted is particularly keen to beat his arch-enemy, Father Dick Byrne of Rugged Island, and goes to great length to get the former television star Henry Sellers on their side
- And God Created Woman - Ted finds himself falling for a steamy novelist. The title is taken from And God Created Woman.
- Grant Unto Him Eternal Rest - Father Jack dies after consuming a bottle of floor cleaner. However, he comes back to life to Ted and Dougal's dismay after they learned that Father Jack is incredibly wealthy.
Series 2 (1996)
- Hell - Ted, Dougal and Jack take their annual holiday and encounter Father Noel Furlong (played by Graham Norton).
- Think Fast, Father Ted - When Ted holds a raffle, he destroys the prize - a new car.
- Tentacles Of Doom - Three bishops visit the island. A worried Ted gives Jack elocution lessons beforehand.
- The Old Grey Whistle Theft - Dougal starts hanging around with a rebelious priest, Father Damo Lennon. Meanwhile a valuable whistle is stolen. The title is a pun on the BBC music show The Old Grey Whistle Test.
- Song For Europe - Ted is goaded by Father Dick Byrne into attempting to write a song for "Eurosong '96" ( spoof of the Eurovision Song Contest). Despite having a song with only one note, Ireland's fear of winning again (and having to fund it) plays into Ted and Dougal's hands. Arguably the most famous episode.
- The Plague - The parochial house is infested by rabbits, just as the very rabbit-phobic Bishop Brennan plans a visit.
- Rock-a-Hula Ted - A feminist singer visits the island just when Ted is judging the annual lovely girls competition.
- Cigarettes And Alcohol And Rollerblading - In a game of one-upmanship with Dick Byrne, Ted decides the three priests must give something up for Lent. The title is taken from that of an Oasis song, 'Cigarettes and Alcohol'.
- New Jack City - Jack's hairy hands get him sent to an old priests' home. Unfortunately his replacement, played by Irish comedian Brendan Grace is much worse. The title is taken from the movie New Jack City.
- Flight Into Terror - A flight back from a pilgrimage runs out of fuel and there are only two parachutes. Only one man can save the passengers...
Christmas special (1996)
- A Christmassy Ted - Ted's quick thinking whilst lost in a department store's lingerie department earns him the coveted Golden Cleric award. So why doesn't he feel happy? At the time this hour-long episode was first shown, it attracted the then highest non-film audience viewing figures for Channel 4.
Series 3 (1998)
- Are You Right There, Father Ted? - Ted's "Chinaman" impression goes down badly with Craggy Island's newly-arrived Chinese community and he is branded a racist.
- Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep - Ted makes a large bet on the King of the Sheep competition. Unfortunately, Chris, his chosen sheep, has heard rumours about a sheep-eating beast and isn't feeling at all himself. The title is a parody of the 1970s song "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" by Middle Of The Road. There is a hidden pun in the show's plot — it's all about sheep worrying.
- Speed 3 - When Ted and Dougal expose a philandering milkman, Pat Mustard, he takes revenge on his replacement, Dougal, by putting a bomb on the milk float. If Dougal's speed drops below 4 mph... This show was dreamed up by the creators when they decided to "see if you could make a worse sequel than Speed 2".
- The Mainland - Ted wins some money on the horses and must travel to the mainland to claim it. This is a very bad idea. Even Richard Wilson doesn't believe it.
- Escape From Victory - Ted takes great steps to ensure he wins a bet with Dick Byrne on the outcome of the All-Priests Over-75's Five-a-Side Football championship. The title is a pun on the football movie Escape to Victory, originally titled Victory, about a football game played between prisoners of war and their guards in World War II.
- Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse - the only episode to follow on directly from the previous one. Exposed as a cheat, Ted waits in terror for Dick to inform him of his forfeit... can you tell what it is yet?
- Night Of The Nearly Dead - The visit of a young daytime TV presenter, Eoin McLove, causes excitement for the island's aging females. The title is a pun on the movie Night of the Living Dead. Eoin McLove is a parody of Daniel O'Donnell, an Irish crooner particularly popular among elderly women.
- Going To America - Ted gets the opportunity of a lifetime, but can't bring himself to break it to the others that they're not invited. The title is a pun on the movie Coming to America. The last scene of this episode was going to show Ted climbing onto a window ledge along with another priest to commit suicide. This was then replaced out of respect at the last minute with a montage containing one clip from every previous episode, in reverse order, as Father Ted actor, Dermot Morgan died just soon after making this final episode. However, the writers have said that the joke didn't really work and would have been replaced anyway.
Pauline McLynn reprised her role as Mrs Doyle in 2001 for a small set of adverts for the UK Inland Revenue, reminding people to get their taxes in on time by uttering her catchphrase ('Go on, go, on') over and over again. Not surprisingly, it was voted the most irritating ad campaign of that year, beating off competition from the now-infamous Ferrero Rocher advert. Ironically, Mrs Doyle was also involved in a spoof of this confectionery-related advert in the episode Tentacles of Doom.