Father Ted
| Father Ted | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews |
| Starring | Dermot Morgan Ardal O'Hanlon Frank Kelly Pauline McLynn |
| Opening theme | "Songs of Love" (instrumental), The Divine Comedy |
| Country of origin | Ireland United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 3 |
| No. of episodes | 25 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | average =24 minutes (varies between episodes) |
| Original release | |
| Network | Channel 4 |
| Release | 21 April 1995[1] – 1 May 1998 |
Father Ted is a situation comedy television programme produced by Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4. The show depicts the lives of three Irish Catholic priests on the remote 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 two Irish writers, Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, who also co-created Big Train. All of the interior scenes were shot at The London Studios and all of the location footage was shot in Ireland.
Graham Linehan, on his DVD commentary on the first episode, says that Father Ted was a character that Arthur Mathews came up with and who was played by third member of the group Paul Woodfull when they did standup gigs in Ireland, playing as a band, The Joshua Trio. Dermot Morgan was picked for the role because he had previously played a priest in standup. As "Father Trendy", Linehan appeared in the first episode of Father Ted wearing a red jacket and a white "bobble" hat.
The series was responsible for propelling a number of actors and comedians into the limelight, including Ardal O'Hanlon, Pauline McLynn, Graham Norton, Tommy Tiernan, Patrick McDonnell, Don Wycherley, Joe Rooney, Jason Byrne, Pat Shortt, Ed Byrne and Brendan Grace. Dermot Morgan, who played the title role, died in 1998, aged 45, from a heart attack he suffered during a celebratory party 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 is often wanting to serve them tea. The three priests answer to Bishop Len Brennan, who assigned them the Craggy Island parish due to different incidents in their past: Ted for alleged financial impropriety, Dougal for something only referred to as the "Blackrock Incident", and Jack for his alcoholism and womanising. The show revolves around the priests' lives on Craggy Island, sometimes dealing with matters of the church but more often dealing with Father Ted's schemes to either resolve a situation with the parish or other Craggy Island residents, or to win gambling bets placed with Father Dick Byrne of the nearby Rugged Island parish.
Major characters
Father Ted Crilly
Father Ted Crilly (Dermot Morgan) is the nominal head of Craggy Island's Parochial House as well as the most outwardly 'normal' of the three priests. He is a bon vivant, exiled to Craggy Island for something referred to only as "that Lourdes thing" - an apparent misappropriation of church funds which had been intended to fund a poor child's pilgrimage to Lourdes, which Ted allegedly absconded to Las Vegas with. Ted's defence has always been that the money was "just resting in my account". As well as having to (often reluctantly) perform his religious duties, he also has to put up with Father Dougal's immense cluelessness and Father Jack's physical and verbal abuse.
While on the surface, Ted is a sympathetic and well-meaning character, he has a frequent tendency to greed, vanity, competitiveness and delusions of grandeur. Ted craves fame, glory and a better life far away from the island. Nevertheless, Ted is genuinely very likeable and quick-thinking, as well as tremendously useful in a crisis (such as when he helps seven other priests out of 'Ireland's biggest lingerie section', or when Dougal is stuck on an explosive milk float).
Father Dougal McGuire
Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) is a very simple-minded soul, in exile for the mysterious "Blackrock incident", involving a Sealink ferry and a group of nuns whose lives were, allegedly, "irreparably damaged", presumably caused by his stupidity. His inability to grasp the simplest of everyday concepts provides much of the humour in the show. Dougal's denseness frequently infuriates and exasperates Ted, as well as get him into trouble.
It is unclear exactly how and why Dougal ended up in the priesthood. 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 hippie) and has trouble distinguishing dreams from reality.
Father Jack Hackett
Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly) is an alcoholic, lecherous, violent and foul-mouthed old 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 these reasons, although one episode mentions the cause of Father Jack's exile as being a wedding he performed in Athlone. His vocabulary is mostly restricted to four shouted words: "Drink!", "Feck!", "Arse!", "Girls!", though he has been known to yell other short phrases ("That would be an ecumenical matter"). Father Jack also has a fear of nuns.
Jack is continuously drunk, rarely without an alcoholic beverage, and has even been known to drink other household liquids including floor polish, brake fluid, motor oil, castor oil, and Toilet Duck. He is also extremely violent, lashing out at anyone and anything who gets on the wrong side of him, but especially Ted.
Mrs Doyle
Mrs Doyle (Pauline McLynn) is the priests' manic housekeeper. Hospitality, especially serving tea (whenever a guest refuses the beverage, she repeatedly exhorts "Ahh, go on! - Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on...") is Mrs Doyle's mission in life. She also 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 without exposing her legs. She also has the occasional tendency to fall from the roof of the Parochial House.
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 was deliberately blocked out by a loud noise, preventing the audience from hearing what was said.
However, Mrs Doyle's first name is given in the script for the episode "Competition Time" as "Joan". 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."[2]
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 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". In the episode The Plague it transpires that the bishop also has a terrible fear of rabbits, having been involved in an "horrific incident" inside 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. He is a Fianna Fail voter.
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 Secret Love: My Life with Father Michael Cleary 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 referred to in many other ways throughout the series run. [1] [2]
Dick Byrne, Cyril MacDuff and 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."
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 big pile of 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 Larry attempts to answer his phone, he suffers some unfortunate mishap or horrible accident (from which he apparently dies), only to return in the next episode. Over the course of the series he only answers his phone twice, once while being held at gunpoint by the Irish army due to a gun smuggling incident; although Duff survives this phone call, it results in another priest being shot, and the second time in answer to Ted wanting to load off some rabbits to him, in which he claims that he does not want rabbits anymore because he has now got rottweilers. When he puts the phone down on Ted, the dogs attack him. He is a Fine Gael voter
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. As part of the continuing narrative, Ted and Dougal are constantly entering the store or encountering them on the island in the middle of a vicious argument. Ted always appears vaguely suspicious that all is not sweetness and light in their relationship, but to all intents and purposes Dougal appears entirely oblivious.
Tom
Tom (Pat Shortt) is an apparently insane resident of Craggy Island who appears whenever the need arises to highlight the surreal and manic nature of the island. He is always seen wearing an ancient, grubby t-shirt reading "I shot JR." Over the course of the series, he was implicated in a number of grisly and/or violent crimes, to which he either readily confessed ("I killed a man") or attempted to explain away ("Tis my money, I just didn't want to fill out the forms"). He reacts to most instructions or minor stimuli with outbursts of brutal violence, ranging from shotgunning a crow from three feet away to attempting to mutilate a family of rabbits with a katana after being asked to take care of them, this second instance being likened by Father Ted to Tom interpreting 'taking care of them' as doing so in the Al Pacino kind of way rather than the Julie Andrews kind of way that Father Ted had intended.
Episodes
Production details
Conception
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. The show later aired on RTÉ Two in Ireland and SBS in Australia.
Filming
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. After the completion of filming for 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.
It is probable that the name of the seminary known as St. Comb's[3], 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 remaining seminary is St Patrick's College, Maynooth.
Theme
The theme tune for the series was written and performed by 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.[4])
The band also contributed most of the show's original music, including its most famous song, the ridiculous "My Lovely Horse" used in the episode "Song For Europe", with singer Neil Hannon providing Ted's vocal in the "enhanced" version (this later appeared as a B-side on the band's single Gin Soaked Boy). 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.
Location
Location shooting for Father Ted was done mostly in County Clare, including locations at Ennis, Kilfenora, Ennistymon, and Kilnaboy. The Parochial House is McCormack's at Glenquin, on the Boston road from Kilnaboy. [5] [6] 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 at LWT's The London Studios.
History
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Controversy
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.
Legacy
The show has developed an almost cult-like status in Ireland, where it is still regarded as one of the best television productions of Irish origin ever. The show is currently being repeated on More4 and RTÉ Two. Only one series is available through the OnDemand service of Virgin Media in the UK, although all three series and the Christmas Special are available on 4oD. In an unusual step for a Channel 4 programme, on November 8 2008 BBC Two showed an episode as part of its tribute night to producer Geoffrey Perkins, who had died just over two months before.[7]
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
- ^ IMDB.com - Release dates for "Father Ted"
- ^ Father Ted: The Complete Scripts, p.52
- ^ From the Father Ted script book
- ^ 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".
- ^ McCormack's at Glenquin used for external shots of the parochial house in the Father Ted TV series 53°00′35″N 9°01′48″W / 53.00976°N 9.02998°W
- ^ http://www.feck.net/splange/ftfaq.html
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fn9ns
External links
- Father Ted at Channel4.com
- Father Ted at EpisodeWorld.com
- Father Ted at British TV Resources
- Father Ted at IMDb
- Father Ted - the TV Series - h2g2 at bbc.co.uk