Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, who had previously penned an unsuccessful sitcom, Paris, wrote the series. Geoffrey Perkins, head of comedy at British Independent producer Hat Trick, commissioned Father Ted, its series about three hopeless priests: the elderly, hideously debauched and incoherent Father Jack Hackett, the childlike young idiot priest Father Dougal McGuire, and the central protagonist, middle-aged Father Ted Crilly. The trio live on the remote and backward Craggy Island with their overhospitable housekeeper, Mrs. Doyle, who lives for tea-making and servitude.

     Like many great sitcoms, the show consists of a group of ill-matched characters thrown into a situation they cannot escape. These are not simply physical confines, however, but a prison of their own making. The priests have been banished to the island by their nemesis, Bishop Brennan, for heinous crimes: Jack for general depravity, Dougal for accidental carnage involving nuns, and Ted for financial irregularities.

     Linehan has said that he and Mathews thought of the series as being in the British sitcom tradition, and there are certainly familiar elements-the enclosed situation, a circular narrative structure, and the ability to eke out laughter from every aspect of human failure and natural disaster. However, there is also a wild ereative surrealism through which every episode is caught up in a whirlwind of madness, whether it is a plague of rabbits, an invasion of zombiefied housewives, or the priests winning the Eurovision Song Contest. Father Ted is like Monty Python blended with the Irish literary tradition of Samuel Beckett and Fiann O'Brien. While apparently anything can happen, in fact everything has its own logic based on how the characters react to particular circumstances. Events and actions are merely just taken to their ultimate bizarre conclusions.

     Jack, Dougal, and Mrs. Doyle quickly became cult favorites across Britain and Ireland. Playgrounds and offices rang out with catchphrases: Jack's "Drink!!!!" and "Girls!" and Mrs. Doyle's pleas of "Ah go on, go on, go on." Their extreme physical comedy is hugely pleasurable, but they are essentially one-note characters-caricatures that by their nature lack subtlety or development.

     The real joy of the series is Ted himself. He alone is played straight, as the calm center amid the chaos. Ted thinks he is the only normal person present and sees himself as a man of intelligence and discernment surrounded by idiots. But in the best comic tradition, he is perhaps the biggest idiot of all. Ted is only too susceptible to earthly pleasures beyond his calling, particularly to the possibility of acquiring large amounts of cash. The "financial irregularities" that consigned him to the island are the subject of much mirth. Any allusion to this leads to Ted fiercely protesting, 'That was a routine relocation of funds. That money was just resting in my account." But as Dougal says, "It was resting for a long time, Ted."

     Ted's dishonesty is matched only by his capacity for lying. Much of the comic energy derives from Ted's inability to admit the slightest mistake or endure the smallest embarrassment. Instead he invents the most bizarre, contorted lies to try and escape the situation. Inevitably they just catapult the story further and further into pandemonium.

     Yet Ted is not portrayed as a venal monster, nor is he a smart amoral operator like Sergeant Bilko in The Phil Silvers Show or Norman Fletcher in Porridge. Rather, he is all too much like us-he tries his best to be good but is hopelessly flawed. This reality is summed up best in the final episode, when Ted is offered a parish in Los Angeles. He asks the American priest recruiting him, "Tell me, is it really as false and artificial as they say it is?" When assured this is the case, he says wistfully, "I'd love that."

     Father Ted's anarchic brand of humor was deceptively gentle, but it managed to aim some fairly sharp blows at the Catholic Church. Not only are the Craggy Island priests utterly dysfunctional, corrupt, and less than spiritual, their colleagues in the cloth are no better. The complacency, sexism, and corruption of the Church are mercilessly, if subtly, mocked (coinciding with a massive decline in its influence in Ireland).

     Linehan and Mathews decided to end the show after three series, while it was still at the height of its powers. Just after the last episode was filmed, Dermot Morgan, who played Ted, died of a heart attack. But Father Ted's popularity remains undimmed. Videos have sold well and Channel 4 has the series on virtually continual rerun.