Heavens above .... it’s Father Brown
Looks at GK Chesterton’s clergyman, 150 after the author’s birth
MARK Williams has found international fame as the charismatic clergyman sleuth Father Brown.
He has said: “I was once in Cartagena in Spain in a sweet shop and a little girl came up to me and threw her arms around my legs saying “Father Brown!”. “That’ll do for me.” Author and poet GK – Gilbert Keith – Chesterton was born in London 150 years ago on May 29. He based his crime-solving character Father Brown on his friend Irish Catholic priest Father John O’connor and wrote 53 short stories featuring his fictional sleuth.
Chesterton once observed: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and also to love our enemies – probably because generally they are the same people.”
Father Brown made his first film appearance in 1934 with Walter Connolly in the title role. Sir Alec Guinness played Father Brown in the 1954 movie and British actor Kenneth More played the role on ITV in the 1970s.
The Fast Show regular Mark Williams first began working on Father Brown in 2012 and the series has gone on to become a BBC and BBC iplayer favourite.
Mark said he read one of the books before filming first began. “I had read The Blue Cross – the first episode of the birth of his character, which is an exemplary introduction of a character as you don’t think he is the hero at all until quite a way into it.”
He added: “He is like Miss Marple; it is the unimportant which is important, which GK Chesterton said himself, and I think possibly Agatha Christie took to heart.”
There have been 120 episodes to date. Tom Chambers joined the cast as Inspector Sullivan and Sorcha Cusack played church secretary Mrs Mccarthy
GK Chesterton himself once said: “I owe my success to having listening respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”