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Father Ted or Alan Partridge?

uhuhhhh?

  • Father Ted

    Votes: 76 46.6%

  • Alan Partridge

    Votes: 46 28.2%

  • Both too wonderful to choose

    Votes: 40 24.5%

  • Both to painful to consider

    Votes: 1 0.6%
  • Total voters
    163
spanglechick said:
I'm afraid I'm not great with "Comedy of Excruciating Embarrassment" - so Partridge has never been good for me - tho i'm sure it's excellent of its type.
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Me too.

Partridge probably was more inventive - and the idea of having a character who blurts out every self interested inanity was great. At the same time, the first (?) series - with the chat show - wasn't all that funny. Got better with the Travelodge stuff.

Father Ted was pure sitcom - but perfectly realised. Way more laughs per episode and, within its limited format, highly surreal. Gets my vote.
 
Hi-ASL said:
I see the Ted-y Boys are running away with it. As one who's not so much a neutral as a double agent, I think it's time for some Alanisms.

  • C*ck P*ss Partridge
  • "Is that a distributor cap off a Ford Mondeo"?
  • "Knowing me Alan Partridge, sacking you Glen Ponder.....A-Ha!!!"
  • "Jurassic Park."
  • "Zombies by their very nature are inconsistent."
  • "A bottle of Blue Nun please."
  • "Wings, the band the Beatles could have been."
  • "Lyn, you were laughing at rain."
  • "This country..."
  • "Don't sing Susan, it sounds bad. You know, to look at you you'd think you'd sing like an angel, but in fact, you sound like a trapped boy."
  • "So what were these orgies like"?
    "I can't remember Alan it was a long time ago"
    "Try and remember"
    "It really was a long time...."
    "Try and remember"
    "I can't"
    "TRY AND REMEMBER!"
There. That should do it.
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You forgot " Dan! Dan! DAN!" etc etc. :D
 
Not sure if I am correct (and not that it is an excuse) but it wasn't suppose to be the last series/episode was it? Was it just that he died?
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I have the Father Ted script books, and before each episode Linehan and/or Mathews write a small piece detailing the history of that episode. For the final episode, they speak of Morgan dying the day after they finished filming it, and how it made them feel as if he'd been hanging on to complete his masterpiece. They were also keen that the show shouldn't out-stay its welcome.

Ted was pure sit-com, and you put forward the hypothesis that it killed the traditional sit-com. It was almost totally concentrated in either the living room or Ted and Dougal's bedroom in the parochial house, in front of an audience in a set-up studio. However, in the nearly ten years since it finished, has there been another really high-quality sit-com with that structure? Partridge wasn't, and others such as Peep Show, The Thick Of It, The Royale Family, Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc, don't even have laughter tracks. Whether this is a bad thing or not is debatable, but it is interesting that nothing has come along.

I think part of Ted's genius came from how it was able to weave the surrealism into this standardised format.
 
stavros said:
However, in the nearly ten years since it finished, has there been another really high-quality sit-com with that structure?
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my hero.

my family. :)
 
Interesting you should mention My Hero, because much like I can't see Ardal O'Hanlon without thinking its Dougal, I can't see Steve Coogan in anything without wishing he was Partridge.
 
stavros said:
I can't see Steve Coogan in anything without wishing he was Partridge.
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yeah. apart from the epic "around the world in 80 days" with jackie chan he really has done nothing else of note. :(

well, unless you count saxondale. or 24 hour party people.

which I don't.
 
"Nuns! Nuns! Reverse! Reverse!"

Pure quality.

I think my DVD's are starting to wear through now of Father Ted, I have seen them that many times.

Thing is I never watched Partridge first time round, so I am only seeing them now for the first time now (thanks to Lovefilm.com) and I think they are quality.

"It's coming up to 4am and time for Alan's Deeeep bath"

I can't decide. I am in a quandry.
 
Alan: You've got a great courtyard, you could have a barbecue out there.

Michael: Oh, you're not allowed a naked flame near the petrol pumps.

Alan: IT'S POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD!

:D :D :D
 
stavros said:
For the final episode, they speak of Morgan dying the day after they finished filming it, and how it made them feel as if he'd been hanging on to complete his masterpiece. They were also keen that the show shouldn't out-stay its welcome.
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The genius of series 1 and 2 was that it took such twee topics like a local funfair, a raffle, a boring priest, and twisted them into complete surrealism through superb scriptwriting and nicey crafted characters. The third series, imo, was sadly lacking in these elements and resorted to daft plots devoid of twee. In no way was it Morgan's masterpiece, more like how I imagine a third series of Fawlty Towers would turn out.
 
Partridge over and over.

Father Ted problems for me.... It was an old school sitcom... laughter track... setup-punchline... setup-punchline. There were some genius moments. The Eurovision one was brilliant.

I lurvvved Partridge cos I like dark humour. There was something vaaaguely real about the character. And some undiscovered things... What *was* in "that drawer" ?



Favourite line:

"Two questions."
"One, you probably think I'm really weird and want to leave immediately".
... ("Yes")
"Two, can I come with you?"
... ("No")

The word mentalist was born. :)
 
"Ted are you awake Ted?". Ted's dreaming of Dervla Kerwin in a Ballykissangle way and when he goes back to sleep is chased by something horrible (peanuts?) but I can't remember what. Father Ted every time. The one where the priests are in the women's lingerie department and have to get out before being discovered and the one with Graham Norton as Father Noel "Ted I think I'm in hell Ted" and the one with "I don't believe it" and the Chinese "I hear you're a fascist now father" and kicking Father Brennan up the arse and Father Jack, Mrs Doyle.
 
brianx said:
and the one with "I don't believe it" and the Chinese "I hear you're a fascist now father" and kicking Father Brennan up the arse and Father Jack, Mrs Doyle.
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He's a Bishop you little bollocks! :mad:
 
stavros said:
I have the Father Ted script books, and before each episode Linehan and/or Mathews write a small piece detailing the history of that episode. For the final episode, they speak of Morgan dying the day after they finished filming it, and how it made them feel as if he'd been hanging on to complete his masterpiece. They were also keen that the show shouldn't out-stay its welcome.
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If you have a look back at Morgan's career he had a first attempt at it with Father Trendy, a radio show.

Explaining catholicism to a young girl:

"Religion is like a bra Mary, it gathers things up and points them in the right direction"

It was great, I had a recording of it that I lost.
 
'Hello there Len'

'I'm a bishop you little bollock!'

Bishop Brennan was a fucking genius character...and his sarcastic sidekick :D

I love both of them.
 
"I hear your a racist now father, is that the Church's offical line? Should we all be racists now father?"

"Those fecking Greeks"

"No Mary, it's the Chinese that he has the problem with"

"Those fecking Greeks invented gayness - you tell 'em father"

And so on......:D
 
In no way was it Morgan's masterpiece, more like how I imagine a third series of Fawlty Towers would turn out.
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I meant Father Ted as a whole. Linehan and Mathews never intended more than three series, and Morgan "hung on" to complete it.

Ted was adapted and extended from Morgan's Father Trendy, but I believe Dougal, Jack, Mrs Doyle, etc were all Linehan and Mathews creations.

I think I remember reading somewhere that the character of Partridge was created by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring when writing for On The Hour, although I think his finest hours were in I'm Alan Partridge written by Coogan, Baynham and Iannucci.
 
Partridge is good but Ted is timeless comedy that still makes me LOL (like a cat or something) on every watch...
 
Love them both, but Fadder Ted shades it for me.

Especially for this chap.

ishotjrmk3.jpg
 
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