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Father Ted
1995 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Arthur Mathews, Graham Linehan
A crazy comedy about three rather strange parish priests exiled to Craggy Island, a remote island off the Irish west coast.
8 positive1 negative14 neutralfrom 23 commenters
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23 comments on Hacker News
British TV is doing _great_ in the streaming era: black mirror, adolescence, peaky blinders, the crown, call the midwife, derry girls, downtown abbey; and so many great police procedurals: line of duty, endeavour, the bay, Sherlock, grace; even those Harlan coben miniserieses - the ones with at least one absurd plot twist per episode - are great fun!
While I’ll be among the first to moan that we’ll never see another red dwarf, python, tinker tailor/smiley’s people, yes minister, father ted [0] .. British tv is still producing great stuff.
It’s the “bureaucrats” in the bbc who are under threat from streaming. I’m not losing sleep!
[0] made in Britain; simply could not have been made in Ireland as was.
'Murican sitcoms seem primarily to be written for lowest common denominator with laugh track and all. Occasionally, you get a show written at a smarter level where most people totally miss the comedy, but they tend to last 1-2 seasons at most because of it. So I have a rule on streaming content that if it is a network sitcom with lots of seasons, I'm not going to watch it.
*Just to mention, I grew up on BBC in America on my local PBS station with shows like Red Dwarf, Black Adder, Are You Being Served, Keeping Up Appearances, Father Ted, etc. That probably explains my dislike for sitcoms
One has to wonder if they trained it on the Father Ted episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfpi5oIFx-Q
Big Train: directed by Graham Linehan - Father Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd...
(And the guard of the hospital in Darth Marenghi's Darkplace.)
Tea drinking in Ireland is a big part of the culture, and we have a lot of unwritten rules around it. I'm sure other irish HN'ers will jump in here and add to the list, but off the top of my head
- if you don't offer someone tea when they come to visit, you are rude. if they refuse, and you accept their first offer without insisting, that's also rude. you have to persist a bit. this was parodied in the TV show "Father Ted" but it has some truth to it
- additionally, if someone says yes to a cup and you don't offer a second cup a while later, probably rude
- if you don't have biscuits, you need to apologise and explain why.
- if you drink green tea or anything other than black "breakfast" tea, you're "fancy"
- Households are either "Barrys Tea" or "Lyons Tea" and people are expected to have a loyal devotion to one and hatred of the other. Other brands (non-irish) are ridiculed, although we all drink all kinds. (Note - this rivalry also extends to 'crisps' or potato snacks - you're either Tayto or Kings)
- some people prefer coffee which is fine, but if you don't like either you're considered odd
“the house that vanished” may sound like a father Ted episode but actually happened on Tory island https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57720152.amp
Isn't there a Father Ted episode in which they're trying to lure him from rural Ireland to somewhere in the USA with "it's really not that bad: last month there was a something-percent fall in the number of drive-by shootings"?
>Preaching the will of organization that condemns them while actively pursuing the condemned interests on public profiles?
Dougal: But Ted, preaching against one thing in public, while secretly doing it in private, that's hypocrisy!
Ted: No Dougal, I don't think so. Hypocrisy is just not something the Catholic church does, if we do something there's usually a good reason for it. Hypocrisy is something more for the common people, and you should strenuously preach against it!
Dougal: Oh OK, thanks for clearing that up Ted.
*My imaginary Father Ted episode, if it was still running.
Father Ted had an episode about this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MiSsKqbPIMU
That was then. I personally know one or two Irish Catholic priests and they are not offended by Father Ted and at least one is a massive fan.
I went to a pretty posh school in Oxfordshire back in the day. The school priest (Church of England) made us watch "Life of Brian" by Monty Python's Flying Circus and discuss it in our "Divinity" studies - an O Level (nowadays GCSE - 13-16 year old).
One of the other Masters (teacher) intended and was going through the process to become a CofE priest and was massively offended by Life of Brian. Perhaps he felt he had to be holier than thou or whatever. He was my rugby coach and was once a player for the Harlequins a long, long time ago so a good egg in my eyes but a bit whizzed up over a comedy film. I will grant him that LoB is a pretty robust parody/critique of Christianity (and English/Britishness and more besides).
Oh and there was a band at my school called On a Friday - they played by the Cricket Pav at the end of summer term 1989 to a load of kiddies enjoying end of term relief and glorious weather. You'll know them as Radiohead. Funny old world.
5am - coffee + browse reddit/hn/blogs + tryna poop
6am - gym climb lift or cardio + meditate
8am - shower at gym and get back home or office ripping down 101+880 in my motorcycle because it makes me feel
9am -- 5 pm - work
5 pm - pickup+drop off family&friends from work/cook,eat/leetcode/side-project/stock+crypto trades/existential dread of just wanting to hang out with friends
9pm - bed & rewatch father ted episodes for the nth time 'dogel you bloody ijiot'
just a modern bay area man
It’s funny, it was just the other day I was trying to convince my other half to watch Father Ted. She thought it’d be like that dreadful Mrs Browns Boys.
Ahhh I loved this show. Sadly they chose not to make more because the guy who played Father Ted tragically died of a heart attack after the first series.
Father Jack makes me piss. I love the episode where they’re trying to teach him how to say phrases like “that would be an ecumenical matter” instead of his usual “Drink, arse, feck, girls”, ready for a visit by a group of Bishops. They ultimately succeed and one bishop is very interested in what Jack has to say after he successfully responds with “that would be an ecumenical matter”.
Or, in response to “what you say to a cup (of tea)?”, he shouts “feck off cup!”
Hilarious. I’m not Irish but I was brought up Catholic so maybe that’s what makes it so funny.
> Now I'm in Austria and the "content" on TV channels is just ridiculous.
small demography of 9MM, so the only way to differentiate themselves against bigger German channels is to produce content specifically for that niche. Shows in Austria/CH only value-add are a "local dialect" of actors, or setting the plot/story within Austria/CH. Other than that it's either a poor local copy of German shows (which are often copies of international shows).
Having been spoiled by British quality TV for a couple of decades I'd say the BBC is an incredible high yardstick, impossible to reach not just for Austria, but there is nothing like it in DACH.
One of my biggest annoyance by far is the dubbing of OC into German. They have only a handful of voice-over actors who they rotate for these jobs so the lead-act of every other movie has the same voice[0].
As a child I thought one of the reasons Eddie Murphy was so funny was because of his incredibly high-pitched voice[1]. Once people sit through the dubbed content most of the meaning and jokes are lost.
While other Europeans grow up watching things like Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses and such classics in their __original__ language, I have not 1 German-native friend who is able to follow English language on TV (even there are subs) and they will never get to appreciate other excellent shows like Norseman, Gomorrah, Suburra, because it's "too difficult to read the subs" and they didn't have to since they were kids.
[0] Dennis Schmidt-Foß has given voices to Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, Eddie Murphy and others. In fact the situation with E Murphy was so bad/ridiculous that they decided to give him a _new_ voice!! That's right the same person now has a different voice and nobody thinks that's odd.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKGAOM0mAOo
Well, at least if they are going to do evil we can rest assured that they aren't very good at it. Speakers in the woods with wolf noises? This sounds like a bad Disney halloween movie. Or that episode of Father Ted. Or that PSA in Talladega Nights about the packs of vicious dogs who control most major cities.
I'm concerned about the negative portrayal of wolves. No matter who is saying it, making people overly afraid of wolves endangers the wolves. Even in wolf country, you are still far more likely to be shot by a hunter than eaten by a wolfpack. Wolves are to be respected, not demonized.
Ah, you don't recognize the plot of an episode of Father Ted. It's titled "Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep".
Abortion aside, Ireland is in fact much more progressive and liberally minded than the US and most of southern Europe.
These comments were made during an interview on the Irish public broadcasting network; just for a comparison, in Italy nobody would have even dared to speak their mind so clearly about God on tv, or the show would have likely been cancelled. Twenty years ago the sitcom "Father Ted" became the most popular show in Ireland, and it would be still considered too blasphemous to be aired by any of the major tv networks in Italy.
Father Ted is a great, great show, btw, well worthy of watching every episode.
The 3-times rule is still the roughly case in Ireland when you're offered something, and what the "ah go on go on go on" in the TV Show Father Ted was satirising.
What's interesting is when customs collide. For example my German relatives wonder why we keep asking them if they want something when they've already said no, whereas I'm waiting for them to offer another two times before I can say yes.
I'm just not sure I buy that. Maybe it's because I DO know non-nerds that like The IT Crowd; like all sitcom, the situation is merely a vehicle for the humour on top of it. in just the same way that you can find Father Ted funny without being a catholic priest. And there are plenty of non-nerds who would get the 'Internet as small black box' joke. And there ARE gags in BBT that non-nerds wouldn't get (not a huge number, but they are there)
Nice quote: Graham Linehan, the writer of sitcoms The IT Crowd, Black Books and Father Ted, also signed the petition. He said: "It just seems to me that people like Richard are being punished for being able to navigate the modern world. The internet has changed everything. They're doing what comes naturally in these new uncharted waters and suddenly they're getting their collars felt by people who still have Hotmail addresses."
For the 2012 contest, I assume that all friendship values remain the same as in previous years.
Being in Europe, I'd say that the love for several countries has been in constant review over the past year. Just how and by how much will be clear after we do the exercise again, after Eurosong 2012.
P.S. that title ("I've got Eurosong fever, Ted") is from a TV series called "Father Ted". I recommend.
I was looking at Father Ted for the first time some months back on More4, and it seems very dated. I like Black Books a lot because of the wry humour. IT Crowd episodes are pretty random (especially series 4), but when they get an episode right, it's stunning.
@Danmatt: Hell no! Controversy is the marketing man's dream. I refer to you to Father Ted episode The Passion of St Tibulus.
"Blasphemous you say Ted? Too much sex? Well, sure, I might just wander in and take a look".