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Father Ted is a popular 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 ran for a total of three seasons between April 21, 1995 on the UK's Channel 4, and the final episode of season three 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. Synopsis Three Roman Catholic priests preside over a parish on Craggy Island: Father Ted Crilly, Father Dougal McGuire and the retired Father Jack Hackett. The three 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. 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 alleged offences, on the other hand, were somewhat more severe, involving the misappropriation of church funds. 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!" , "Girls!" and "Gobshite" 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 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. Ted also has 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. Father Dougal McGuire 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) and has trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. He is also addicted to 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". 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 (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), and is basically incapable of functioning normally as a human being, let alone as a priest. 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, brake fluid, motor oil, castor oil and Toilet Duck. 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"). Mrs. Doyle Mrs Doyle (Pauline McLynn) is the priests' manic housekeeper. She was once married, a fact revealed in a brief slip of the tongue on her part in the episode "Night of the Nearly Dead". Hospitality, especially serving tea ("ahh, Go on!") 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. Her first name is rarely mentioned. The third season episode The Mainland implies that it is a well-kept secret, blocking out by a loud noise, such as a bell sounding or someone dropping a plate, although it is revealed as "Joan" in the script of 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." 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. Clergy Bishop Leonard "Len" 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" and despises the fact that Dougal refers to him as simply "Len". He also has a terrible fear of rabbits, following a horrific incident in an elevator, where the rodents nibbled on his cape and "everything". He has a secret mistress and son living in California, not unlike the real-life Eamon Casey, former Bishop of Galway. Father Noel Furlong Father Noel Furlong (Graham Norton) and his reluctant St Luke's Youth Group. Father Noel is overwhelmingly enthusiastic, regaling everyone with song and dance. 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 to escape him. He appeared without the youth group once when he appears as the guardian of Father Faye, the Monkey Priest of Killybashangel, on the last episode of season two, "Flight into Terror." According to Graham Linehan's DVD commentary to the Series Two episode "Hell," Father Noel is a deeply closeted homosexual, though Arthur Mathews stated in the series' scriptbook that he imagined Noel as being asexual. Father 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 (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" was found in the house of a fellow priest, with whom he was sharing a car at the time. Father Dick Byrne Father Dick Byrne (Maurice O'Donoghue), 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". His two colleagues on Rugged Island, Father Jim Johnson (Chris Curran) and Father Cyril MacDuff (Don Wycherley), are similar characters to Jack and Dougal. John and Mary OLeary Local shop-owners Mary and John O'Leary (Rynagh O'Grady and Patrick Drury) 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 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 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 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". Trivia 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 by an almost exclusively 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 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. 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 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 Inis Oirr - 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, More4 and RTÉ Two. 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. Ironically, Mrs Doyle was also involved in a spoof of this confectionery-related ad in the episode Tentacles of Doom. Reference Footnote | |||||||||
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