Declan’s new job with the priests

May 1995

Talented Wexford man Declan Lowney, whose impressive CV includes the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988, has a new project these days.

Declan, son of John and Peg Lowney, is currently directing ‘Fr. Ted’, a new comedy series on Channel 4/S4C that features Dermot Morgan, Ardal O’Hanlon (son of former Health Minister Rory O’Hanlon) and Frank Kelly as three Catholic priests in a small parish on an island off the west coast of Ireland, called Craggy Island.

Written by Morgan and O’Hanlon, is it said that the series will take an off-the-wall poke at the Catholic Church, and while the humour will be ‘light and silly’, there will also be an undercurrent of the seriously satirical.

It remains to be seen just how hard-hitting that satire might, and given the current climate of scandals and allegations that have rocked the Church, how the series will be received here in Ireland.

The first episode of ‘Fr. Ted’ is to be broadcast later this month, and there is bound to be big number of interested viewers in the director’s home town of Wexford.