Revered by other comedy snobs, and obviously funny, I've never got on all that well with the ecclesiastical classic, finding it a bit cynically contrived and considering Big Train to be peak Linehan/Mathews.
I enjoyed its flights of fancy, but it's not something I've made an effort to seek out since I was a teenager who'd watch any comedy that came on, whether it was on my bedroom portable or a bus full of schoolkids on their way to Germany, hearing that theme tune over and over.
Still, it's something to watch and tediously compare. Here are a non-fan's Top Twenty-five Teds.
Crag-key Island:
Series 1 (1995)
Series 2 (1996)
Christmas special (1996)
Series 3 (1998)
The all-priests five-a-side over-75s indoor challenge football match gets a big laugh, but it's diminishing returns by now, like the "ludicrous" set-up that draws attention to itself. I forgot the old fellers were even priests, or the main characters for that matter. Dermot Morgan's death has always hung over the final series, but it's especially hard to put out of your mind here, what with all the death gags.
When Father Jack starts turning into a werewolf, he's sent off to the funny farm and replaced with a cunt who's very unenjoyable to watch. The moral seems to be, appreciate what you've got when it's comparatively less debilitating.
It was going to come up sooner or later, but the prospect of romance for Ted falls back on traditional sitcom farce without any of the surreal elements that enhance other lacking episodes, unless the Almighty really was messing with him. There's a good bit where Ted digs himself into a hole of promptly exposed lies though.
Even when sexism's knowing and ironic, it's not huge fun to sit through. The most interesting thing about this one is Glaswegian Clare Grogan being allowed to put on an Irish accent. More acceptable than some English gobshite doing it, I suppose.
We've already moved beyond the original remit and are mocking alcoholic hasbeen TV personalities now, which is disappointing. On the plus side, the secondary cast of unusual priests expands with the ever-jubilant Father Dunne and the doppelgängers of Rugged Island. The phrase "all-priest Stars in Your Eyes lookalike competition" is funnier than the realisation.
In the kind of bizarre, off-brand episode you can just about get away with at the end of a series, Ted becomes an action hero and there are some stock plane gags.
A mandatory excursion to the mainland is predictably troublesome as Jack gets attacked by crows, Mrs Doyle gets physical over a cafe bill and Ted annoys Richard Wilson, appearing in a good sport guest spot. Graham Norton reprises his annoying role with unfortunate aplomb to drag things down.
Low-key criminality descends on Craggy Island courtesy of Dougal's bad influence friend. The overgrown high school plot isn't all that funny, and I'm not convinced that the island's the crime-free haven presented for the sake of this story, considering all the sinister things we see even within the same episode, like John killing Mary there.
The closest thing to a Mrs Doyle episode, this is as respectful to middle-aged women as you'd expect. The zombie parody's well done, the cake jumper's gold and William Shatner's Tekwars [sic] is a brilliant reference, but as far as penultimate episode titles go... did no one raise the possibility of maybe changing that in post-mortem post-production at any point?
Quite bold to go with your intentionally tedious episode so early, and not the best choice, since we don't learn much more about the regulars. It's a bit of a chore by design, but passes surprisingly quickly.
I never found Father Jack all that funny, so thankfully it's only his spirit that dominates this episode in premature memoriam. Ted and Dougal may end up trying to hasten his next bout of death, but as far as depraved sitcom characters go, they're not bad guys, really.
I thought they were planning a fourth series, but evidently not, since this ends things as neatly as you ever could, teasing Ted with dream career advancement and revealing more of his true colours before abruptly taking it away and leaving things as they always were. This all overshadows the sub-plot of the depressed priest, which is the funniest part.
Len's always good value, though somehow less intimidating when he goes full Dracula in this final appearance. The sense of dread is palpable early on, but dissipates as it goes along, then it's just a drawn-out confrontation. Still, a better cliffhanger resolution than some sitcoms manage.
The priests take a well-earned break to look at some rocks, watch kettles boil and try to solve the riddle of perspective, when they're not causing fatal road accidents and having run-ins with the law for unrelated reasons. These things will happen when you don't put any effort into planning your trip.
The characters randomly entering Eurovision is quite the season eight idea, but since they go all out with a proper song, some industry griping, homosexual awkwardness and rekindled rivalry with the Rugged Island counterparts, they get away with it.
Going with a rare religious theme, the priests respectively give up smoking, drinking and their well-established rollerblading habit for lent, with help from an over-zealous nun. I'd wondered why they went extracurricular so early on, but I suppose there's only so many rituals you can tick off.
After a year off, the show returns sillier than ever. The backtracking setups of unlikely Nazi memorabilia and impossible perfectly square bit of black dirt on the window come together nicely, but in their self-deprecating self-awareness, you wonder if their hearts are in it any more. A hamster riding a bike didn't bother me as much as upping the Mrs Doyle abuse.
A good introduction to our dysfunctional sitcom family, illuminating Dougal's innocent dimness and Ted's thirst for fame like an Irish Count Duckula. We get a fair overview of Craggy Island too, a throwaway comment about nuclear waste dumping explaining an awful lot.
Like Seinfeld's similarly late 'The Frogger,' I have more fondness for this bonkers final-year stuff than I perhaps should, since it's the first I remember watching at the time. Though they do manage to squeeze in some relevancy with the ineffectual mass.
Linehan & Mathews pull the wool over our eyes with what initially looks to be a pathetically obvious 'mystery' send-up, but actually turns out pretty impressive. You could make the case that a series has gone on for too long when they're doing a story like this, but I'm glad they gave the barrel a good scrape.
This extra-long festive treat teases us with a cliched Christmas plot for about 20 seconds before instead turning its focus to department store lingerie sections, low-stakes cat burglars, perplexingly catastrophic funerals and matador stuff. Mrs Doyle even gets to do some panto flying.
Fawlty Towers meets 'The Trouble with Tribbles' as leporiphobic Bishop Brennan chooses the least opportune time to stay. Meanwhile, Jack's dehumanisation is complete as he's penned up like a dangerous dog to stop him from flashing passersby. This is so silly and I'm really into it now.
Ted's cunning plan to raise funds to fix the leaking roof gets a bit out of hand. As does the broader priest ensemble, which has already given us a whole sitcom's worth of colourful background characters just eight episodes in, none of them recurring thus far.
The show threatens its most cliched tale yet when bishops visit and the priests have to be on their best behaviour, but the paths it takes are far from conventional. Like all the best episodes, it takes deserved stabs at the whole organised religion business too.
The introduction of antagonist Bishop Brennan is an excuse to fill in the backstory of how these priests ended up in the arse end of nowhere. Someone'll make the pointless prequel some day. Of course, it's the self-defeating protests over the titular scandalous film that makes it a classic.
