The Mainland (Father Ted)

"The Mainland" is an episode of the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted. It was first broadcast on 3 April 1998 as the fourth episode of the third series.

Synopsis

On a visit to the mainland to collect £200 he won betting on the Priest's limbo competition, Ted and Dougal get lost in a cave while trying to escape enraged television personality Richard Wilson (who reacts with extreme violence to Ted mentioning his catchphrase 'I don't believe it!'). Along the way the hapless duo encounter Father Noel Furlong and his St. Luke's Youth Group who have been trapped for two days. His screeching triggers a cave-in and his youth group, under the pretense of going to get help, flee to Paraguay. Meanwhile Mrs. Doyle and her friend Mrs. Dineen spend an afternoon in a teashop only to end up arguing and starting a fight over who should pay the bill whilst Jack accidentally joins an alcoholics anonymous group after an appointment with an optician following the mysterious disappearance of his spectacles (mainly because a crow keeps flying off with them).

Casting

• Richard Wilson makes a special guest appearance as himself, with Ted and Dougal recognising him as "yer man from One Foot in the Grave". In the episode, every time Ted says, "I don't believe it", Wilson becomes very angry (and in their first encounter, he even roughs Ted up a bit). This is a real-life reference to the fact that Wilson really does hate people going up to him and saying his catchphrase from One Foot in the Grave and only performs the line for charity events.^[1] The situation was conceived when Father Ted writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews sat behind Wilson at a performance of Le Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall. They considered how "tasteless and wrong" it would be to lean forward to him every time that an acrobat did a stunt and yell the catchphrase, and then they realised that that's exactly what their fictional priests would do.^[2]

• Graham Norton returns for his third and final appearance as Father Noel Furlong. He sings the Queen songs "Bohemian Rhapsody" and, at the very end of the episode, "Fat Bottomed Girls".

• Art director Bill Crutcher appears in a cameo as the smoking bin man

References

External links

• "The Mainland" on the IMDB