Father Ted

[Altair]

I'm sure if I had chosen a slightly more 'universal' episode it would have worked - I wouldn't claim Americans don't get Irish humour! However, I think it does serve as a reminder of the cultural specificity of comedy and how it can fail to translate even in a country with a shared language.

[colinr0380]

I suppose that the relatively most famous figure in the show for an international audience is Graham Norton turning up just before he became better known as the UK's biggest chatshow host, playing a rather obnoxious youth leader bearing a grudge against one of the kids in the troop and over enthusiastically suggesting group activities often involving terrible noises: "Who can screech the loudest? I know, let's have a screeching competition! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

His character really anticipates the decades of reality TV singing shows that followed!

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

A golden moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0

[Always Points North]

Over the years it's been great seeing the various guest actors in other things. Really funny to discover that Niall Buggy had been Arthur Frayn in Zardoz, which I saw many years before finally watching Father Ted; Jim Norton's many appearances — including several Babylon 5 ones as it turns out — and behind alien makeup — more recently seeing him in a good role in the 2009 film The Eclipse; Gerard McSorley, who appears in one of my favourites, Angel (1982).

[JamesF]

Indeed - it was especially odd as a young fan of the series seeing Jim Norton turn up opposite Chevy Chase in Memoirs of an Invisible Man!

[colinr0380]

Indeed - it was especially odd as a young fan of the series seeing Jim Norton turn up opposite Chevy Chase in Memoirs of an Invisible Man!

It might be even more odd to note that he also played one of the gang members in Straw Dogs! As well as appeared in an episode of Frasier! Archbishop Brennan was in high demand everywhere, it seems!

[Swift]

I didn't know there was a Father Ted thread around here. As a teenager in Dublin when it aired, it became an instant classic for my generation. I believe we even did a spoof of it for our school play.

I've been that unsufferable guy in Canada trying to force it on people I know. I will say that though I prefer to go in chronological order, the first couple episodes of the show are a bit rough. The pilot is ok but not especially funny, whereas Entertaining Father Stone is probably the worst episode of the whole show, certainly the dullest. It's hard to portray boredom on screen without coming across as boring yourself. And yet, then the third episode The Passion of Saint Tibulus is an all time great and one of the more famous episodes with the famous protest scene taking on a life of its own. Knowingly saying "Down with this sort of thing" in Ireland is always expected to have "Careful now" as a follow up. Those two phrases are now a mainstay of Irish protest marches.

As a whole I think it's fairly universal humour as evidenced by this thread but there certainly are some things that only Irish (or people familiar with Irish culture) would get. I think you need to know who the twee Daniel O'Donnell is to fully understand the Eoin McLove character for instance. The Lovely Girls festival is a pisstake of the bizarrely still ongoing Rose of Tralee. And I've always imagined that the casting of Pat Laffan as the milkman going around impregnating the local women is in direct reference to his role as Georgie Burgess in the Roddy Doyle adaptation The Snapper, a very popular book and film at the time in Ireland where he gets a local teenager pregnant.

Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy who wrote the theme tune later turned it into a full song. It's gorgeous.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Indeed - it was especially odd as a young fan of the series seeing Jim Norton turn up opposite Chevy Chase in Memoirs of an Invisible Man!

He was in also in recent horror film, The Boy - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3882082/