'''Father Ted''' was a popular 1990s
television situation comedy set around the lives of three priests on the extremely remote (and fictional)
Craggy Island off the west coast of
Ireland. It ran for three series, totalling 25 episodes, between
21 April 1995 and
1 May 1998 on the UK's
Channel 4. ''Father Ted'' was written by
Arthur Mathews and
Graham Linehan, who also co-created ''
Big Train''. All of the interior scenes were shot at
The London Studios, while all of the location footage was shot in Ireland.
The series was responsible for propelling a number of highly successful actors and comedians into the limelight, including
Graham Norton,
Tommy Tiernan,
Patrick McDonnell,
Don Wycherley and
Joe Rooney. Other Irish comedians who featured included
Jason Byrne who made a cameo appearance as a referee in
one episode,
Ed Byrne who played a teenage pranskster in
another, as well as
Brendan Grace.
Dermot Morgan, who played the title role, died from a heart attack the day after filming the final episode.
Synopsis
The show follows the exploits of three
Roman Catholic priests who preside over a parish on
Craggy Island, located off the west coast of Ireland.
Father Ted Crilly,
Father Dougal McGuire and the retired
Father Jack Hackett live together in Craggy Island's
parochial house, along with their housekeeper
Mrs. Doyle, who "keeps Craggy Island Parochial House floating on a sea of
tea" according to official synopses.
The three priests answer to the fierce, uncompromising
Bishop Len Brennan, who makes frequent visits to the island, often to cast his disapproving eye over the trio and their backwater parish. He is apparently responsible for their exile to the less-than-desirable island parish - the reasons for the move are hinted at across the several series. They appear to stem from a mixture of incompetence and embarrassing conduct: Father McGuire due to his incompetence (with particular regard to "the Blackrock Incident", in which a large number of lives were irreparably damaged although they were "only nuns"); Father Hackett because of his alcoholism and implied womanising, which caused severe embarrassment to the
Catholic Church; and Father Crilly for alleged financial impropriety. Ted still insists he was innocent, regularly claiming that "the money was just resting in my account", and that it was "a perfectly legitimate monetary transfer".
The show also introduced 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!", "Girls!" and "Gobshite".
Major characters
Ted
'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 in order to go on a gambling spree to
Las Vegas. Ted has frequently claimed that the money was "just resting in my account." 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 although he is also shown to be as easily seduced by fame as by money. Ted is the devious schemer of the piece and most of the plots are driven by some plan or other that Ted, a fantastic liar, has hatched to either extricate himself from a bad situation or escape Craggy Island for fame and fortune. Often the pursuit of these schemes will necessitate Ted hiding from or separating himself from the company of Mrs Doyle, Father Dougal or some other character on a flimsy pretext along the lines of, "I think actually I'll just stay here and have a quiet pray". Indeed the more devious Ted is being, the more likely he is to say something about prayer or wanting to pray. He frequently justifies his intended sins and schemes to Father Dougal. For example saying that by committing a small sin they are preventing a big sin. Ted is probably the most complex of all the characters and despite his cynicism he often seems to be genuinely disturbed when Father Dougal makes innocent, frequent and sometimes fairly philosophically damning statements or observations about the faith.
Ted also keeps a framed picture of Ireland's
1990 and
1994 World Cup manager,
Jack Charlton, on the mantelpiece just beside a picture of
The Sacred Heart.
Dougal
'Father Dougal McGuire' (
Ardal O'Hanlon) is a very simple-minded soul, in exile for a mysterious incident in
Blackrock involving a group of
nuns and a
Sealink Ferry, presumably caused by his stupidity. His inability to grasp the simplest of everyday concepts provides much of the humour in the show. Dougal also regularly expresses doubts about the validity of Catholic Orthodoxy (indeed, he appears to have no religious belief whatsoever, even questioning the existence of God in front of a visiting Bishop, who eventually gives up the faith and becomes a hippy) and has trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. He also has an addiction to rollerblading, which proves his downfall when he tries to give it up for
Lent ("
Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading"). The sun is always shining in his world and he often doesn't understand what Ted means. He also called himself "cynical" in the episode "
Speed 3". His ideas are always shot down by Ted but in the episode "
Are You Right There, Father Ted?", he comes up with a really good idea and Ted asks him to describe it in detail. Dougal then says: "I never knew you had to follow up a good idea with loads of really good small ideas." He then apologises before leaving to sleep in the spare room. Seemingly he can come up with a good idea if he doesn't put much thought into it.
Jack
'Father Jack Hackett' (
Frank Kelly) is an
alcoholic, lecherous, violent and foul-mouthed elderly priest, who is basically incapable of functioning normally as a human being, let alone as a priest.
He is on Craggy Island for all of the above, although one episode mentions the cause of Father Jack's exile as being a wedding he performed in
Athlone. No details are given but a shot of his face shows a lecherous expression, suggesting he may have acted in a manner sexually inappropriate for a priest, or perhaps been carried away by his own alcoholism.
Although he can usually be found drinking alcoholic beverages, Father Jack is also known to drink other household liquids including, but not limited to floor polish (which gave him death-like symptoms such as
decomposition), brake fluid, motor oil,
castor oil and
Toilet Duck (which causes him to embark on a hallucinogenic trip of sorts). In one episode he also drank a whole bottle of sleeping medicine (Dreamy-Sleepy-Nightie-Snoozy-Snooze) and subsequently fell asleep for two weeks. In his younger days he was a
fire and brimstone preacher and is said to have been the first priest to denounce
The Beatles ("He could see what they were up to"). According to one of
Graham Linehan's former peers at Catholic University School (C.U.S.), Fr Hackett was apparently based on one of the priests resident at his former secondary school. During the episode, "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", Jack gave up alcohol and Ted remarked that he had been drunk for so long that sobriety must be like a strange, hallucenogenic drug to him. In this rare lucid period Jack cried out in anguish "Oh, my God! Don't tell me I'm still on that fecking island!"
Mrs. Doyle
'Mrs. Doyle' (
Pauline McLynn) is the priests' manic housekeeper. Apart from being "Mrs." rather than "Miss" Doyle, the only reference to her marriage is her remark in the episode "
Night of the Nearly Dead", "This reminds me of the time my husband...I've said too much."
Hospitality, especially serving tea ("Ahh, go on! - Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on...") is Mrs. Doyle's mission in life; other items served include a mountain of sandwiches which are discarded when she discovers they are not to her own taste, an array of cakes which after much persuading she eventually withdraws from offer in spite of much protest, the lettuce and water she brings for Dougal's pet rabbit
Sampras in "
The Plague" and the cakejumper she bakes for her idol
Eoin McLove in "
Night of the Nearly Dead". She spends a significant amount of time trying to clean 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 also has the occasional tendency to fall from the roof of the parochial house.
Mrs Doyle gives Dougal a bath.
Her first name is never mentioned in the series. The third series episode, "
The Mainland", maintains the secret in a scene where her name was spoken twice but on both occasions is blocked out by a loud noise, preventing the audience from hearing what was said.
However, Ms. Doyle's first name is given in the script for the episode "
Competition Time"; Linehan and Matthews describe it in their footnote as "a very good example of the kind of information one carelessly flings about in the early days of writing a sitcom, without realising that it has the potential to be a lovely dark secret for years and years."
[1]
Recurring characters
Other priests and islanders have recurring roles in the series. Their details are given below. A number of priests, parishioners and other characters appear on the show on a one-off basis.
:''For a complete list, see
''Father Ted'' minor characters.''
Clergy
Bishop Leonard Brennan
Bishop Brennan
'Bishop Leonard "Len" Brennan' (
Jim Norton) is Ted's boss, originally from Limerick (as Ted reveals when trying to stall him from entering his rabbit-infested bedroom). Len has little patience with Ted and his friends, to whom he refers as "the cast of ''
Police Academy''" and gets very angry when Dougal refers to him as simply "Len". ("
The Plague") He also has a terrible fear of rabbits, following a horrific incident in an elevator, where the animals "nibbled on my cape and everything". He has a secret mistress and son living in
California, not unlike the real-life
Eamon Casey, former Bishop of Galway. On his DVD commentaries Graham Linehan suggests that also in the Brennan mix is the public persona of
Father Michael Cleary, Casey's friend, one of the most popular faces of the church and a regular guest on the RTÉ ''
Late Late Show'' whenever there was a debate about religious matters. Cleary's stringently expressed views on sexual morality were famously exposed to be at odds with his own private life when a book about his 26-year secret affair with his housekeeper
Phyllis Hamilton entitled '' was published in 1995 (the year the series started). The book was co-written by Hamilton with
Paul Williams. Ted is seen to be reading this book at the start of an episode in series 2 and it is referenced in many other ways throughout the series run.
[1] [2]
Noel Furlong
'Father Noel Furlong' (
Graham Norton) and his reluctant St Luke's Youth Group. Father Noel is overwhelmingly enthusiastic, regaling everyone in his company with song and dance. Even when buried under a large pile of heavy rocks, he continues to talk incessantly and cheerfully. His version of "
Bohemian Rhapsody" was a high point of the series. His youth group eventually ran off to
Paraguay to escape him. He appeared without the youth group once when, as the guardian of Father Faye (the Monkey Priest of Killybashangel) on the last episode of series two ("
Flight Into Terror"), he was involved in an incident which almost resulted in the deaths of a plane full of priests returning from a pilgrimage. According to Graham Linehan's DVD commentary to the series two episode "
Hell", Father Noel is a deeply closeted homosexual whose repression of his own sexuality has "driven him slightly mad", though Arthur Mathews stated in the series' scriptbook that he imagined Noel as being
asexual. According to Linehan's DVD commentary, he is supposedly based on a real priest.
Larry Duff
'Father Larry Duff' (
Tony Guilfoyle), 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, whenever Ted calls him on his mobile phone, it causes him to suffer a horrible accident; nevertheless, he always reappears unharmed in subsequent episodes. These events include car and skiing accidents, an avalanche, a disastrous donkey derby, a very painful mishap with a stapler, an unlucky incident with a
knife thrower, being ravaged 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" was found in the house of a fellow priest, with whom he was sharing a car at the time.
Dick Byrne, Cyril MacDuff & Jim Johnson
'Father Dick Byrne' (
Maurice O'Donoghue), Ted's opposite number and arch-nemesis on the nearby
Rugged Island. Dick is forever up to no good. As Ted pithily states, "As priests go... he's a really bad priest." His two colleagues on Rugged Island, 'Father Jim Johnson' (
Chris Curran) and 'Father Cyril MacDuff' (
Don Wycherley), are similar characters to Jack and Dougal, respectively. Dick Byrne and Father Ted are eternally involved in continual games of oneupmanship and become engaged in many and various bitter competitions (frequently betting four pounds on the outcome), in which both are more than willing to cheat. For example in the episode about Lent, ("
Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading"), Father Ted's motivation to give things up is cited as: "I'm not going to be beaten by Dick Byrne in a giving things up competition, and that's what this is... a giving things up competition."
Islanders
John and Mary O'Leary
Local shop-owners 'Mary' and 'John O'Leary' (
Rynagh O'Grady and
Patrick Drury) who, while 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) is a bizarre inhabitant of Craggy Island who nevertheless has a polite tone to friends. He wears a T-shirt on which he claims "
I shot JR" (a reference to a 1980 episode of ''
Dallas''). 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. 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 ''Eurosong'' 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 three feet away from him with a
shotgun in the first episode. Of his involvement in a
post office robbery, he claims, "It's my money, I just didn't want to fill in the forms."
In the episode "
The Plague" when Ted and Dougal are waiting for Tom, he is seen in the background using several weapons including a
baseball bat,
chainsaw and finally a katana. This is apparently a reference to the
Quentin Tarantino movie ''
Pulp Fiction'', in which
Bruce Willis's character "Butch" browses through a similar set of weapons.
Episodes
Main articles: List of Father Ted episodes
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 produced 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 was and remains 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.
Ted and Dougal in the music video for: "My Lovely Horse"
The theme tune for the series was written and performed by
Neil Hannon's band
The Divine Comedy, and was later reworked into "Songs of Love", a track from the album ''
Casanova''. (The song "Woman of the World" from the same album was also offered as a potential theme tune, but rejected.
[2]) 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. Hannon 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 three,
Dermot Morgan died of a
heart attack, aged 45. As a result, series three 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.
On
April 1 1998, rumours surfaced on the Internet about a new American remake of the show entitled ''Ted'', consisting of the original characters in a younger form, Mrs Doyle's husband, Ted's ex-wife and their 5-year-old son, all living in a
New York apartment. Other changes included a rather dull gag of Ted having to hide his ex-wife and son when Bishop Brennan arrives, and dramatic changes to Dougal, making him a streetwise rapping priest. The show was due to be broadcast in 1999 but was revealed to be an
April Fool's hoax.
Location shooting for ''Father Ted'' was done mostly in
County Clare, including locations at
Ennis,
Kilfenora,
Ennistymon, and Kilnaboy. The parochial house is at Glenquin, near Kilnaboy. The cinema featured in "
The Passion Of St Tibulus" was The Cinema by the Sea,
Greystones,
County Wicklow and "The Field", the location for Funland in "
Good Luck, Father Ted", is in
Portrane, North
County Dublin. The opening sequence (including shots of the ''Plassey'' ship wreck) were filmed over
Inis Oírr - the smallest of the
Aran Islands. The interior scenes were filmed in
London.
In January 2007 a dispute arose between
Inis Oírr (pop. 250) and
Inis Mór (pop. 1,200) over which island can claim to be Craggy Island, and thereby host a three-day
Friends of Ted Festival. It was decided that in appropriate Father Ted fashion the dispute would be settled by a five-a-side football match held on
25 February 2007.This was won by Inis Mór in a 2-0 match allowing them to use the title of Craggy Island until February 2008, whilst Inis Oírr was given the title of Rugged Island.
Craggy Island Parochial House.
It is probable that the name of the seminary known as St. Columb's, which Ted and a number of other priests in the show attended, was influenced by the name of
St. Columb's College in
Derry,
Northern Ireland, of which Seamus Cassidy, a
Channel 4 producer, was a past-pupil. In reality, Ireland's only seminary is
St Patrick's College, Maynooth.
The show is currently being broadcast on
BBC America, and is repeated frequently on Channel 4,
More4 and
RTÉ Two. All three series are available through the OnDemand service of
Virgin Media in the UK.
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 advertising campaign of 2001, beating competition from the now-infamous
Ferrero Rocher advert. Coincidentally, Mrs Doyle was also involved in a spoof of this confectionery-related ad in the episode "
Tentacles of Doom".
References
★ ''Father Ted: The Complete Scripts'' by
Graham Linehan and
Arthur Mathews, 1999, Boxtree Press, UK, ISBN 0-7522-1850-6
Footnote
1. ''Father Ted: The Complete Scripts'', p.52
2. As stated by Neil Hannon in the documentary ''Half Minute Melodies'', BBC Radio 4, 3 February 2000. Hannon offered a choice of tunes to the producers; his personal preference was for "Woman of the World".
External links
★
''Father Ted'' at
Channel4.com
★
''Father Ted'' at EpisodeWorld.com
★
''Father Ted'' Zone
★
''Father Ted'' FAQ
★
''Father Ted'' at British TV Resources
★
★
Comedy Guide - ''Father Ted'' at
bbc.co.uk
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