'Father Ted' came out during a period when I seldom watched TV, so it was purely by accident that I happened to catch an episode whilst at my parent's place. At first I thought it was going to be a fairly typical middle-of-the-road British sitcom, but it soon became evident that this veneer of normalcy was a Trojan horse, allowing in the show's pointed satire of The Catholic Church, and its wonderful, off-the-wall surrealism, mostly supplied by the young Father Dougal, some of whose utterances had me almost literally in tears.
Take this dialog, when the islanders are convinced that some kind of monster is prowling 'the moors', taking sheep.
"They say it's as big as four cats, and it's got a retractable leg so as it can leap up at you better and you know what Ted, it lights up at night, and it's got four ears. Two of them are for listening and the other two are kind of back-up ears, and it's claws are as big as cups and for some reason it's got a tremendous fear of stamps and Mrs. Doyle was tellin' me that it's got magnets on it's tail so as if you're made out of metal it can attach itself to you, and instead of a mouth it's got four arses. "
Needless to say, after that, as a fan of the British surrealist tradition, I was hooked, and soon learned to love the other characters and the show as a whole.
Perhaps what makes it so great is that it managed to combine satire and surrealism with other more conventional comic styles which appealed to my parent's generation (my mother is 71 and loved the show).
If there was a finer sitcom to come out of the UK in the 90's, I don't know what it is. But then, I probably wouldn't.
