Review of a new memoir about the making of Father Ted, by its producer

Thirty years after its Channel 4 debut, Father Ted retains a degree of fan devotion that is reserved only for the first rank of sitcoms. A wonderful, timeless alchemy of superb writing, memorable characters and sublime performances have ensured that this comedy about three isolated, eccentric priests and their batty housekeeper, living in mutual purgatory on a windswept island off Ireland's west coast, still feels as unique and hilarious as the night it first broadcast.

Producer turned novelist Lissa Evans can lay claim to being one of the show's original converts. She was at Hat Trick Productions, working on Room 101, when she was passed one of the scripts and was instantly smitten with Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews' writing, before a scene had even been shot. Their portrayal of Ted, misguidedly trying to tap a dent out of his car, before cutting to the same vehicle as a total wreck, 'almost gave me a hernia' she recalls.

When the sitcom was commissioned for a second series, before the first had even aired and as the original producer, the late Geoffrey Perkins was moving on to the BBC, she accepted the offer to produce a show she'd already fallen in love with. Presiding over the second and third run, the final episode was infamously completed, with heartbreaking timing, the day before the show's star Dermot Morgan died of a heart attack.

In the introduction to her book about her time on the show, Evans shares a memory that encapsulates the crazed but controlled chaos of shooting the comedy, recalling a brief scene of Ted putting a golf ball, only to be mowed down in a car driven by Father Jack (sadly, the also late Frank Kelly).

Except that it wasn't Morgan and Kelly shooting the scene but the show's stunt supervisor 'Bronco' McLoughlin and a Stuntman standing in. Reassured that everything was under control, Evans was shocked to discover that no simulation was employed, that the car simply hit the Stuntman and he rubbed his sore leg afterwards.

Picnic On Craggy Island is essentially an account of Evans often desperately trying to bring Linehan and Mathews' bizarre storylines and fondness for cartoonish, Simpsons-style crosscutting to life on time and on budget. All the while, the core cast of Morgan, Kelly, Ardal O'Hanlon and Pauline McLynn – plus innumerable guest stars as the show's weird, warped and wonderful ensemble of priests – endured the west coast of Ireland's inhospitable weather and the freakish scenarios they were placed in.

The memoir rather betrays its origins as ad-libbed anecdotes that Evans shared at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival, after a planned interview she was supposed to conduct with O'Hanlon about his new novel was scrapped when his flight from Dublin was cancelled last minute.

The personal, snapshot style-retelling, presented in a chronological, episode-by-episode guide to the second and third series, is eminently readable. And it really conveys the stress that the production was operating under, travelling back and forth between location shooting in Ireland and the studio and rehearsals in London, finding ingenious ways to bring the writers' demented visions to life.

Unfortunately, by focusing on the practical battles of working with sheep and hairy babies, there's a disappointing level of analysis in the book and very little real digging into the elements that made the show such a success.

For example, there is next to no insight offered into Linehan and Mathews' working partnership, never mind the former's latter-day pariah status due to his views on trans issues.

Evans' recollection of the whole crew gathering, with bated breath, to witness the magic of McLynn deliver Mrs Doyle's perfect fall from the windowsill, is electric. As is Graham Norton's audition to play the excitable Father Noel Furlong, concerned that he may have overdone it when he's absolutely smashed it out of the park.

More typical though is Evans' account of The Mainland' episode featuring One Foot In The Grave star Richard Wilson getting harassed by Ted, and the sole observation that Wilson was 'a delight throughout', followed by a supplementary anecdote about his appearance on Room 101.

Brian Eno's cameo isn't even afforded that. A fleeting reference to Father Ted almost landing Pierce Brosnan for a guest role is especially frustrating, as Evans has since expanded upon it in a newspaper interview for the book, in which she also gave a measured assessment of Linehan's recent travails.

Her affectionate words for Morgan and Kelly notwithstanding, there's really only the sketchiest impression of the actors as personalities, the chemistry of their casting essentially belonging to the first series, and so, virtually ignored.

Somehow, O'Hanlon, who brought so much of his stand-up persona to Father Dougal's juvenile dementia, feels less present as a person than Norton. Or even the series' composer, The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, to whom Evans devotes a page or so.

Still, there are some joyous tales. Who can forget Jim Norton as the terrifying Bishop Brennan? It's a delight to hear the trick that was used to make his flowing cape resemble Batman's while he ran. Still more so to hear the psychological mind games that director Andy De Emmony employed to make Morgan appear genuinely scared of him.

The reader will find themselves overwhelmed with envy for the original studio audience who were present during the pull-back and reveal of the Nazi memorabilia basement in Are You Right There Father Ted? Or the real-life wedding party, good-naturedly gatecrashed and sworn at by Kelly while he was in make-up as Jack.

With its grainy shots of Kelly and McLynn doggedly smiling through the awful, disfiguring warts and blemishes that they had to suffer, and the revelation of character actors being used as different characters from episode to episode with nobody noticing, Picnic At Craggy Island will send you rushing back to watch the series again.

Although infuriating at times in its lack of depth or detail, the book does at least capture the singular, loveable madness that makes Father Ted so revered.

• Picnic On Craggy Island by Lissa Evans is published today by Doubleday, priced £14.99. It is available from Amazon for £14.39  – or from uk.bookshop.org, below, which supports independent bookstores.

Review date: 20 Feb 2025
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson