To die at 45 is simply ridiculous. A joke’s a joke, but there’s no need to take it that far.
I was unreasonably distressed. The death of a comic is often tragic.
Father Ted’s parish, Craggy Island, is a bubble of profanity lightly attached to reality with a bit of string. An asylum for priests who hadn’t quite got the hang of poverty, chastity and obedience. Or logic or coffee. Or anything much. Father Ted is there for fraudulent conversion of funds intended for Lourdes – though, as he clearly explained, the money was simply resting in his account. Father Jack is there for a crime so unspeakable they can’t speak about it – Father Jack certainly can’t, having a vocabulary of only four words: “Drink!” “Feck!” “Girls!” and “Nuns!” Father Dougal is not quite there at all.
It’s a sort of Sing Sing from which they emerge briefly and blinking for a sing song. Like their Irish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest.
In any other setting Father Ted would have been a comedy about a dodgy dad with a dim son and a wife welded to a teapot. Say, The Glums. As it is, the whole thing is dipped in holy water and comes up sparkling with lunatic light.
Maybe, as Father Ted said (in the clip of the bishop in bed with Father Jack which was run and re-run on the news of his death): “It’s just a bad dream, Your Grace.” Ah, right Ted! Dermot Morgan is dead but, like the Moving Madonna of Ballinskiddle, we don’t have to believe it if we don’t want to.
