Dermot Morgan played Father Ted Crilly as a man a beat too pleased with himself, so that we saw each disaster coming before he did. It is one performance, and it is enough; almost everything before it was aimed at Ireland alone.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Ted Crilly hear a small lie he could let pass. He cannot. Morgan's face does a short tour: the idea arriving, the pleasure at having had it, then the first quiet dread. Then he speaks, and the parochial house is done for until the credits. It is the engine of Father Ted (1995), and Morgan works it for 24 episodes without it ever wearing thin.
Almost everything else he did happened in Ireland and stayed there. He had been a schoolteacher, and he came to comedy in the late 1970s with sketch characters on RTÉ's The Live Mike (1979–1982), one of them a priest called Father Trendy, which tells you where he was headed. The mid-1980s were quieter; a small part in the film Taffin (1988) is one of his few screen credits from that stretch. Then Scrap Saturday, the radio satire that ran from the late 1980s to 1991 and had him mimicking Irish public life week by week. His gift then was the impression and the sketch: a stand-up's instincts, quick and mercurial, not obviously the equipment for a sitcom lead.
Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan gave him the equipment. Ted is the one on Craggy Island who wants something: a mainland parish, a little respect. Ardal O'Hanlon's Dougal wants nothing, Frank Kelly's Jack wants a drink, Pauline McLynn's Mrs Doyle wants you to have tea, and Morgan's job is to want, scheme and lose, week after week, without becoming tiresome. He does it by playing Ted a beat too pleased with himself, so that the audience is always one step ahead. We felt for him more than a comedy about exiled priests had any business asking, and it was the moment after each collapse that did it: a flicker of real hurt, then the cardigan straightened and the next plan begun.
Not all of it lands. The first series is still finding its nerve, and some in Ireland thought the early episodes played to British ideas of the Irish. The charge fades as the show finds its footing. Off screen, Morgan had a reputation for a mind that would not stay on one thing for long, and several collaborative writing projects came to nothing. Ted, written by other people to a weekly deadline, was the discipline his own instincts never quite supplied.
Three series is the whole account. If you are coming to it fresh, start with the second; the first is still deciding what it is, and Morgan already knows.
Biography
Dermot Morgan (31 March 1952 – 28 February 1998) was an Irish comedian and actor. He is best known for playing Father Ted Crilly in the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted (1995–1998).
Educated at University College Dublin, Morgan worked as a teacher before entering comedy. He first appeared on Irish television in The Live Mike (1979–1983) as the character Father Trendy, and later created and starred in the satirical radio series Scrap Saturday (1989–1991).
He made his film debut in Taffin (1988). Father Ted, written by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, ran for three series. Morgan received a British Comedy Award in 1996 and was awarded a BAFTA posthumously in 1999 for Best Comedy Performance.
