Counting sheep
Would Father Ted get made today?
It may not be up there with the most interesting facts ever recorded, but did you know that the sheep boasting the world record for 'heaviest fleece' was named Chris, after a sheep in the sitcom Father Ted? Probably not. But given that this unusually wooly animal lived in Australia, and was named in 2015, nearly two decades after the episode aired, it does illustrate the enormous appeal of what was, when you think about it, quite an odd show.
That episode involves Craggy Island's annual King of the Sheep competition, which has been won for the past seven years by, yes, Chris. Ted puts a bet on Chris to win again, then discovers that the perennial champion is suffering a loss of confidence, so coaches him back to fell pelt (or back to full fleece). 17 years later, in Canberra, Sue Dowling spots a sheep with a particularly enviable coat, names it Chris, and it goes on to win that coveted award. Life imitating sitcom.
Father Ted left a lasting legacy then, but it's interesting to wonder whether such a show would get made nowadays, in the modern sitcom landscape. You can well imagine a current commissioner sending the script back with lots of notes, perhaps asking for the main character to be a lot more believable while everyone else does the silly stuff ('make it more like Ghosts'). Nowadays Ted would probably be perfectly happy back at the parochial house browsing top online casinos while Dougal distracts him with slapstick sheep shenanigans.
Then again, there was always a seam of dark satire underlying these shows. One of the most popular episodes, Song for Europe, involves Ted and Dougal doing surprisingly well at Ireland's qualifying competition for a big European song contest, and is said to reference the rumour that Ireland actively sent an inferior song in 1994, so they definitely wouldn't have to host the event again, having won for the previous two years. Ironically, that song - My Lovely Horse, written by The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon - became better known than some of the real winners.
The show's distinctively deft-but-daft style meant they could tackle heavier subjects too, but keep it very accessible, while Ted himself is hardly your conventional leading man. Far from it: he's deeply flawed, frequently up to something a bit shady, and often ends up with a less-than-happy ending. In many ways - while obviously very exaggerated - he's surprisingly realistic. Which is another question to ponder: who is the more believable character, the late Dermot Morgan's Father Ted Crilly, or Dawn French's good-natured vicar of Dibley, Geraldine Granger?
Perhaps today's terrestrial TV comedy commissioners are warier of focussing on shady types. Whereas, when you think about it, a lot of the best main-characters from times past were hardly paragons of virtue. Positively villainous, in fact.
The shady deals of Derek Trotter [Only Fools And Horses]. The abhorrent views of Alf Garnett [Till Death Us Do Part/In Sickness And In Health]. And then there's Porridge's Norman Stanley Fletcher, a 'habitual criminal' according to the title-sequence judge's summing up, embarking on a five-year stretch at Slade Prison. But where would British comedy be without them?
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