List of Father Ted characters
Father Ted is a sitcom produced by independent production company Hat Trick Productions for British broadcaster Channel 4. Its three series, comprising 25 episodes and a special, originally aired from 21 April 1995 to 1 May 1998. Its main characters, Father Ted Crilly and his fellow priests Father Dougal McGuire and Father Jack Hackett, were exiled to Craggy Island, where they lived with the fourth main character, housekeeper Mrs Doyle. All four actors appeared from the series' first episode, "Good Luck, Father Ted", to its last, "Going to America". Pauline McLynn also played a nun in the episode "Flight Into Terror", in which Mrs Doyle appears only briefly.
Main characters
Father Ted Crilly
Father Ted Crilly, played by Dermot Morgan, is a morally dubious Roman Catholic priest exiled to Craggy Island under suspicion of stealing money intended to fund a child's pilgrimage to Lourdes and using it, instead, to pay for his own trip to Las Vegas. He is later transferred to a comfortable Dublin parish, only to soon be sent straight back to Craggy Island after a church accountant discovers irregularities in his church expenses claims.Father Dougal McGuire
Father Dougal McGuire, played by Ardal O'Hanlon, is a childlike, simple-minded Catholic priest exiled as punishment for "the Blackrock incident". It is unclear how he entered the priesthood, or indeed why he is a priest as he seems to have no religious beliefs whatsoever.. In episode 6 of series 1, we find out that Dougal lost his two parents and his uncle while giving the last rites.Father Jack Hackett
Father Jack Hackett, played by Frank Kelly, is an elderly, foul-mouthed, alcoholic priest whose vocabulary consists largely of the shouted words "feck", "arse", "drink" and "girls". He usually shouts whenever he speaks, although he speaks in a much calmer tone when offered alcohol. He is also capable of identifying a bottle of wine, as well as its vintage, just from the sound of the bottle clinking. While it is never explicitly stated why Bishop Brennan has condemned him to Craggy Island, in the episode "The Passion of Saint Tibulus" it is implied that it has something to do with a wedding ceremony Jack performed in Athlone. In "Tentacles of Doom", with the promise of more "drink", Ted trains Jack to say "That would be an ecumenical matter!" and "Yes!" so that he may convincingly circumvent any questions put to him by a party of visiting bishops. Jack has a fear of nuns; in the episode "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", upon seeing Sister Assumpta and learning that she is a nun, he runs screaming out of the window. He regards the sick and poor with contempt, referring to them as a "shower of bastards". It is later revealed, in his will, that he saved up £500,000, which Ted attributes partly to Jack's "never giving money to charity" and that "he wouldn't wear trousers during the summer".Jack can be violent. For example, in "The Passion of Saint Tibulus", when Bishop Brennan wakes him up, Jack punches him in the face while shouting "Feck off!", while in the episode "The Mainland", Jack is arrested for assaulting and hospitalising a man he had met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting he'd accidentally attended, after the man saw him in a pub and tried to stop him from drinking. He is also shown to have a habit of destroying the television by throwing bottles containing alcohol at it and blowing it up, leading to Ted telling Dougal not to turn the television on when Jack is sleeping in the room.
Although Jack is an alcoholic, his drinking is not limited to alcohol; he will drink almost any liquid he can get his hands on, except for water or tea, which he despises. Over the course of the series, he is revealed to have drunk Toilet Duck, floor polish, brake fluid, anointing oil, Harpic and Windolene.
Jack has very bad personal hygiene. This is evident from his unkempt hair, scabs near his mouth, stains on his clerical collar and decaying teeth. His chair also has a large stain behind his head. Ted once panicked when he thought that the time of the year for Jack's bath was approaching, however, to Ted's utmost relief, he remembers it had been performed over six months prior. Jack also has a variety of smells, including vegetables, which attracted rabbits in the episode "The Plague". Jack once locked Father Jessup in his underpants hamper, where Jessup was tormented by the extreme smell. Mrs Doyle wears a helmet when clipping Jack's nails, as does everyone else in the room.
Jack is usually in his chair, often sleeping, and is rarely active. In the episode "Escape from Victory", it emerges that Jack slept for 14 days straight after drinking a whole bottle of an alcoholic sleeping aid known as "Dreamy Sleepy Nightie Snoozy Snooze", which is banned in most European countries. When he has to be brought out of his chair, he usually has to be put in a wheelchair, which is generally pushed by someone else. He has a walking stick with him when he is in his chair, although he is able to walk without it.
Jack is prone to hearing loss caused by a build-up of wax in his ears, which the other priests use to make candles. However, he is shown to be able to hear just fine when Ted offers him a glass of brandy. He also has a cataract in his left eye.
In the episode "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", Ted observes that Jack has not been properly sober for 12 years. When he briefly awakens from his drunken state, Ted having made him give up alcohol for Lent, he is startled to find that Dougal and Ted are the only ones in the room with him, demanding "Where are the other two?", suggesting he usually sees double. Soon afterwards, he realises to his horror that he is "still on that feckin' island".
In "The Craggy Island Parish Magazines", it is stated that Father Jack served as chaplain to the fictional Paraguayan leader General Guillermo Paz for three years in the 1950s, until he left hours before Paz was hanged from a lemon tree by a group of peasants during an uprising. It is also stated that before he became a priest, Hackett had many varied careers, including captaining a ship.
Mrs Doyle
Mrs Doyle, played by Pauline McLynn, is the parish priests' housekeeper. Her first name is not mentioned on the show, but is given as Joan in the draft Competition Time script. Whenever a character speaks her first name, background noise suddenly erupts, masking whatever is being said. This gag was repeated in Tedfest 2007 when Graham Linehan was going to reveal her first name in a transmission but his voice was masked by the sound of breaking glass. In the DVD commentary with Arthur Matthews in the episode Old Grey Whistle Theft Linehan stated that they 'did have a name for Mrs Doyle'.Mrs Doyle is a hyperactive, repressed and somewhat insane parish housekeeper with an over-the-top zeal for her work. Obsessed with refreshments, she is often to be found preparing copious amounts of tea, cake and sandwiches; she disdained an automated tea-making machine, stating that she "liked the misery" of making tea, and was devastated when Ted bought her one for Christmas. She eventually destroyed it and convinced Ted that she was the right person for making tea. She even stays up all night "just in case one of you needs a cup of tea!" Whenever Ted or somebody else refuses one of her beverages, sandwiches or cake, she urges them on for some time, usually just by repeating "go on, go on", until the offending priest or guest finally agrees just for the sake of some peace. Sometimes, she then denies them the offered item. In the episode Hell, when Ted finally gives in, she concludes that she is forcing him to have a cake, and tells him that he should "just say no", calling it a "word that Our Lord gave us to use when we didn't want any cake". She then proceeds to have the cakes destroyed.
Aside from simple domestic chores, Mrs Doyle also performs all the other tasks that need completing around the house, such as digging drainage ditches and mending the roof. In this respect, Ted takes advantage of her work ethic and treats her like a general dogsbody. She frequently suffers accidents while attending to these chores, such as falling off the roof, falling down the stairs and especially plummeting head-first out of the large window frame in the front room.
Little or nothing is known about her personal life except that she must have been married at some point and previously spoke of having a sister. She has a dim view of sex, once mentioning how thankful she is that "she never thinks about that sort of thing", and in this respect appears quite conservative. In "And God Created Woman", when she and Ted are discussing the work of novelist Polly Clarke, she laments how much swearing there is in modern fiction and goes on a rant about the amount of sex in Clarke's books. She also becomes spiteful, condescending and visibly jealous whenever another woman comes into the parochial house, especially those who are good-looking or command the attention of the priests. She has women friends on the island who appear sporadically throughout the series, and who all look and dress in a fairly similar fashion to herself and speak in much the same manner.
In the episode "The Mainland", she is arrested for getting into a fight in a tearoom.
Graham Linehan has stated that he always thought Mrs Doyle originally met Father Ted by winning the Lovely Girls competition.
Supporting characters
Bishop Brennan
Bishop Leonard "Len" Brennan appears in three episodes: "The Passion of St Tibulus", "The Plague" and "Kicking Bishop Brennan Up the Arse".A recurring antagonist in the series, Bishop Brennan is a stern, overbearing, foul-mouthed, lecherous, hypocritical narcissist who despises Ted and frequently casts a shadow over his lowly priest's life. Throughout the series he consistently addresses Ted using his surname: "Crilly", and this reference is one of several traits that symbolises his displeasure at the Fathers' incompetence. He also despises Dougal, whom he refers to as a "cabbage". He does not take kindly to Dougal calling him "Len", and sometimes shouts profanity at him when he does so.
Brennan has also forsaken his vows of celibacy; in "The Passion of Saint Tibulus", it is revealed that he has a secret partner and love child in America. Also, in "The Plague", when Brennan hangs up the phone on Ted, a naked woman joins him in the bath straight after.
He visits the island on three occasions:
- When the "blasphemous film" The Passion of Saint Tibulus is being shown on the island thanks to a loophole despite a ban on its appearance elsewhere. Ted and Dougal's half-hearted protest in standing against the showing only attracts more attention to the film, with people flocking to the island to see it. Bishop Brennan vows to punish the three priests by exiling them elsewhere in the world, to places even worse than Craggy Island. However, the Bishop changes his mind off-screen when Jack finds a video tape in his overnight bag containing footage of him with the boy and woman who are presumed to be his long-rumoured son and girlfriend on holiday in California. It is implied that Ted used this footage to blackmail him.
- When Father Jack starts a habit of nude sleepwalking, which to Bishop Brennan's fury had been witnessed by an old and respected friend of his. During this visit, Ted goes to great lengths to conceal from the bishop the presence of a horde of rabbits in the parochial house, as Bishop Brennan has a fear of rabbits due to a traumatic experience with the animals in a lift in New York, where they "burrowed" into the lift and nibbled on his cape. Despite Ted's best efforts, the rabbits end up in Brennan's room while he is asleep due to Father Jack sleepwalking into his room and getting into bed with him. Upon waking up, Ted and Dougal try to convince Bishop Brennan that he is simply having a bad dream, which he initially believes before screaming once he realises the truth.
- When Ted has to pay a forfeit to Father Dick Byrne after cheating at a football match, Father Byrne orders Ted to kick the bishop "up the arse". To give Ted an opportunity to carry out the forfeit, Byrne calls the bishop and tells him that his likeness has appeared in the skirting boards of the Craggy Island parochial house; ultimately, all the bishop sees is a crude watercolour painting of a man in a bishop's hat. Whilst the bishop is bent over, Ted kicks him up the arse as hard as possible. As the kick takes place, Dougal takes a picture, which is subsequently reproduced in various sizes. When the bishop sees, via a print propped against the front of the house, the picture of the kick, he asks Ted to position himself so that the bishop may stand behind him, and after turning around and seeing the picture, Ted realises why Brennan has made the request. Ted flees across a field, but the bishop catches up to Ted and kicks him up the arse in revenge, sending Ted flying.
Bishop Brennan is consistently addressed by other characters as "Your Grace", which is an unofficial salutation.