Recent Viewing: Father Ted, Series 1
Father Ted is one of those BBC sitcoms I’d known of for some time, but had never watched. They don’t show it on the local PBS station, and the DVDs are expensive, so when it popped up at the library…
We expected gentle, inoffensive humor. After all, you really can’t make fun of the church on television.
But Father Ted does. I wouldn’t call it vicious, but it does take a stock sitcom situation and apply it to the Catholic Church. Predictably, the church was not amused - all the more reason to watch it. Why does the Church bother to post statements like this? In one episode, Father Ted is ordered to protest a movie the church views as immoral. In doing so, Father Ted merely calls attention to it, and makes it into a big hit. Has the church missed the point?
The story is about three priests in a remote island off the west coast of Ireland. One is a young fool who clearly never should’ve been ordained in the first place. Another is old codger who is conveniently deaf and comatose, whose only interests are drinking and lechery, and whose dialogue is limited to “feck off!!” And the third is Father Ted. He seems normal, likeable. What’d he do to get exiled to this place?
In one episode we get our answer when a bishop visits, and gives more exposition on why these three priests were banished to the island. In Father Ted’s case, he was caught with his fingers in the till - to which he professes innocence. As the bishop is about to exile them to even more remote assignments (eg., to fashion peace from a blood feud between warring tribes in Guyana). The trio of priests save themselves by blackmailing the bishop with a compromising videotape.
A postscript: Dermot Morgan, who played Father Ted, died days after completing the third series.
We’ll keep series 2 and 3 on our radar screen.