Comfort Classic: Father Ted

COMFORT CLASSIC

Channel 4 Father Ted

Father Ted is one of TV’s ‘Fathers… finish your Catholic Church would have been greatest British sitcoms – up there with other breakfast and come unthinkable in the wake of the child abuse scandals that have rocked the giants of the genre such as Fawlty Towers, Gavin and outside for your institution in recent years. Slapstick is often a vital ingredient in Stacey and The Thick of It. It daily punishment.’ comedy. In Father Ted, made by comedy is plain loopy – daft, surreal, edgy in its debunking of the Church and blessed Steve Clarke applauds powerhouse Hat Trick, slapstick is given a surreal edge in, say, the episode by four timeless characters. This quartet were delivered to the a comic gem (the writers’ favourite) in which Ted kicks the pompous and tyrannical small screen fully realised in the first Bishop Brennan in the arse. episode shown on Channel 4 in 1995: pre-dinner nip of sherry. Father Jack Or as the insanely clumsy Mrs Doyle the utterly gormless Father Dougal is a sex-obsessed, uber-sozzled priest, again falls out of a window or lurches

McGuire; the debauched Father Jack an alcoholic sometimes in the full grip into a door, the contents of her tea

Hackett; the obsequious housekeeper of delirium tremens. He rarely says trolley scattering across the cluttered from hell (sort of), Mrs Doyle; and the anything apart from: “Drink! Feck! and moth-eaten sitting room. eponymous Father Ted Crilly, vain and Arse! Girls!” The set itself is a joy, shabbier even hapless. There is a lot of the anarchy of The than its occupants.

Ahead of its time, Father Ted is no Young Ones in Graham Linehan and All great sitcoms are based on char cosy, suburban sitcom poking gentle Arthur Mathews’ comic masterpiece. acters that jump out of the screen. fun at well-meaning vicars fond of a The show’s reckless attitude to the Father Crilly, scheming, always on the