“A Christmassy Ted” Special Christmas edition of the comedy series “Father Ted” (Channel Four, 1996)
There are probably few people who have not seen at least one episode of the successful series based on an isolated island off the Irish coast and featuring the late Dermot Morgan, the series running for three seasons before the lead actor’s untimely death. This is the Christmas episode, often simply referred to as “The Father Ted Christmas special”, and though it pushes the endurance just a tad at over twice the normal length of an episode, clocking in just short of the hour, it packs an awful lot into the story.
There’s a major crisis averted when Ted, Dougal and six other priests all find themselves in the rather unlikely position of having wandered into a department store’s lingerie department --- “Ireland largest lan-jer-ay selection, I understand”, as one of the other priests informs Ted. Rather uncharacteristically taking charge, and fearing yet another scandal in the Catholic church, Ted leads the priests out of the department and nobody is the wiser. Or so he thinks.
His quick thinking and assertive actions have not gone unnoticed by the higher-ups, and he is to be awarded a Golden Cleric, one of the top awards the priesthood can bestow on one of their own. Reverting rather more to form though, as he prepares to accept his award on television, Ted is more interested in drawing up a damning list of all those who have wronged him over the years and gets so caught up in his petty act of revenge that he rather spoils the moment.
There’s more of course, and it does give the impression over time of being overstretched and padded out, with a fairly weak ending, but it’s still definitely worth watching. Notable scenes: wounded in the line of duty. “Ah Ted! It’s me own fault! I was fiddlin’ with one of these bras and it went off and hit me in the eye!” The priest with the most boring voice and Ted running down his list --- “And now, we come to liars.” Classic.