Every country and culture has its own sacred cows, untouchable tenets of their faith or history that you do not mess with. England has the Queen. You can say anything you like but don’t slag off Her Majesty! America, basically, has patriotism. It’s “God bless America” if you know what’s good for you, and of course Islam has Mohammed, whose image must never be seen and who may not be lampooned or denigrated in any way. And Ireland has the Catholic Church.
For a very long period, right up to about the 1970s, priests were the real power in Ireland, especially in the rural communities. They were sacrosanct: God’s messengers on Earth, and virtually infallible. They did not lie. They did not womanise. They did not cheat. In all honesty, if you had to choose between the word of a Garda (police officer) and a priest, you would go for that of the clergyman every time. They were the real power behind the throne, and nothing got done without their tacit or explicit approval. They could even bring down governments, or at least encourage/order their flock to do so.
Of course, it was all bull as we now know. As report after report of clerical sexual abuse filters out through the news and more and more priests appear on the sex offenders’ list, and scandal spreads across Ireland like a dark stormcloud, we can see how truly evil and mortal some of these men were. Not all, by any means, but some, and the clerical abuse scandals prove that one thing these men were, and are, is fallible, tragically and horribly so, and the last thing any of them should be doing is telling us how to live our lives.
But back then as I say the Church was the law, and you dared not go up against it. Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews, two writers for the Irish music magazine “Hot Press”, aimed to change all that. In all the history of Irish TV there had never been an unsympathetic, much less satirical depiction of priests and the Church, but that time was coming to an end. Set on the remote and fictional island of Craggy Island, said to be off the west coast of Ireland, Father Ted Crilly lived with his two fellow priests in virtual disgrace, exiled to the forbidding island for “financial improprieties” which had embarrassed the Catholic Church, and in particular the bishop in charge of his diocese.
Really unsuited for the clergy, Ted spends his days dreaming about being a rock star or a TV heart-throb, and gets by as best he can, while basically babysitting his younger curate, Father Dougal Maguire, and enduring the abuse of the old retired priest, Father Jack Hackett. As in such sitcoms, unlikely events conspire to produce hilarity, the writers all the while taking sharp and sometimes unkind pot-shots at the Catholic Church and its assumed superiority in Ireland. Although commissioned for Channel 4 and first shown there, RTE, the Irish national television channel, had no problem showing it and it quickly became the favourite comedy show in Ireland, the moreso because we Irish could so easily relate to what the three priests were living through, and were finally, after hundreds of years, free to laugh at the priest without looking over our shoulder in fear of a vengeful thunderbolt. It was quite a liberating experience.
Father Ted ran for three seasons, and also included a Christmas Special, before the untimely death of star Dermot Morgan, though he had already decided not to pursue a fourth season, should it be commissioned, as he did not want to get typecast. It regularly crops up as one of the most innovative comedies of the last twenty years, and is constantly repeated on the TV on various channels. In ways, the show probably quit while it was ahead, ending on a high note, and will always be remembered for finally opening the last forbidden door of comedy in Ireland. It also made a star and household name of Morgan, who had hitherto been a well-known comedian in Ireland but had not been in the public eye for decades.
CAST
The main cast of the show is restricted to basically four people, with the odd intervention from peripheral characters, but these are the core ones:
DERMOT MORGAN as
Father Ted Crilly: Exiled to the lonely and desolate Craggy Island for the sin of taking money that had been collected to send a sick child to Lourdes and instead using it to go on a holiday to Las Vegas, as well as other financial irregularities, Ted is a man who has not so much a crisis of faith, but who was never all that bothered in the first place. It’s likely he was pushed into the priesthood, as was the custom in Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century. When Ted points out “Normally the brainy ones (brother) would be doctors and the eejit brother would go into the priesthood”, Father Dougal remarks “Yeah. Your brother is a doctor, isn’t he Ted?” leaving us in no doubt as to where Ted came in the family pecking order!
ARDAN O’HANLON as
Father Dougal Maguire: Best and most kindly described as a child in a man’s body, Dougal is much younger than Ted and very impressionable. He seems to live in his own private world, only occasionally visiting the real one. Much of the comedy in the show stems from Dougal’s inability to grasp simple concepts and ideas, leading Ted in exasperation one night to ask “How did you get into the priesthood, Dougal? Was it, like, collect ten crisp packets and you become a priest?” It certainly seems like it; Dougal has no idea what being a priest entails, as he snig
gers to Ted “Sure it’s no more likely than that stuff we learned in the seminary, the crucifixion, the resurrection and all that. Sure who’d believe that?”
FRANK KELLY as
Father Jack Hackett: One of Ireland’s most respected actors, Frank Kelly dumped the trappings of fame to play the alcoholic, rude Father Jack whose favourite --- indeed, at times it seems only --- words are “Feck! Drink! Arse!” and “Girls!” He spends every day in a stupor of drink, does no work and is rude and abusive to anyone unlucky enough to come near him. He thinks Ted is an eejit and Dougal a gobs
hite. And he’s right.
PAULINE MC LYNN as
Mrs Doyle: The long-suffering housekeeper for the three priests, the one passion in Mrs Doyle’s life is tea. If she’s not offering it she’s making it, and if you don’t want any she’ll persist until you agree to accept a cup. She is the workhorse of the parochial house, from mending broken roof tiles to digging ditches and washing, cleaning and ironing. In all respects, she functions as a mother to the three priests, who seem unable or unwilling to do anything themselves.
There are other characters, as I say, such as the eternally fighting couple John and Mary, Bishop Len Brennan and Father Larry Duff, as well as Ted’s nemesis and arch-enemy, Father Dick Byrne, who lives on the opposing Rugged Island, but as these drift in and out of the series I will mention them when they’re relevant. There are of course also a host of other priests, all of whom have some interesting story, and again these will be introduced as and when.