Father Ted Crilly first televised appearance. In 1990, Linehan and Mathews began writing "Irish Lives", a six-part comedy television series. The show would have taken the form of a mockumentary, with each episode focusing on interviewing a different character; one of the six characters was Father Ted Crilly. The script, delivered in 1990, described Ted as "a perpetually jolly and rather sad man who, through some terrible accident of faith, has found himself in the priesthood." The story involved Ted returning to his seminary to catch up with his old friends, including Father Jack, whom he fails to realise has recently died. Producer
Hell (Father Ted) would describe it as a "holiday in Hell", hence the episode's title. The unusual attractions such as The Magic Road were based on real-life locations Arthur Mathews had visited. During the filming of the scene in Entertaining Father Stone where the priests are playing crazy golf in a rain storm, which caused the actors to get soaking wet, Dermot Morgan joked that next time the writers will probably get them covered in raw sewage. This is the entire reason why the scene where Ted and Dougal are sprayed with sewage was written. The actors did not realise that the substance