Father Ted was a rollicking success from day one, a marvellous, surreal, genuinely bizarre mix of whimsy, blarney, satire and violence packaged in outrageously funny plots. The action takes place in the priests' home on remote Craggy Island, where Father Ted Crilly struggles to control his two fellow priests, the young Dougal and the old Jack. Ted is a complex character, well-meaning on the surface but vain and greedy underneath, with a lust for fame and glory never far away. Dougal, his young protégé, is strangely obtuse and stupendously dense, with a habit of asking blindingly obvious questions (if Ted is reading a book, Dougal inevitably asks, 'Are you reading a book, Ted?') that seriously irritates Ted and leads to a torrent of un-priest-like language. But Ted is an amateur in the ways of curse words compared to the heinous, constantly-smashed Jack, a grizzled, nasty termagant whose brain has been addled by booze. Jack, the most extreme of the unholy trinity, is a scabby, foul-smelling wretch who sits in his chair either asleep or staring wildly into the distance, venomously cussing ('Feck!', 'Arse!', 'Knickers!' and so on). A hideous ratbag he may be, but a hysterically funny one nonetheless, and a monstrous comic creation blending all the hallmarks of Alf Garnett and Albert Steptoe.
Overseeing these three is the housekeeper, Mrs Doyle, another larger-than-life comic caricature. She seems normal enough at first but can easily slip into the weird zone, maddeningly repeating the same phrase over and over again ('go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on') when attempting the simplest task like finding out if the priests want their tea. Another of Mrs Doyle's unnerving habits is her ability to hugely raise the decibel level of her voice from one end of a sentence to another. Sporting a permanent, prominent cold-sore on her lip, Mrs Doyle seems right at home in this bleak priest hole.
I wouldn't have appreciated that
Father Ted
