Father Dougal McGuire Linehan and Mathews to discard the mockumentary format and expand the Father Ted episode to a traditional sitcom, Father Dougal became one of the main characters. When writing Dougal, Linehan and Mathews drew on Stan Laurel, incorporating some of Linehan's own behaviour during moments of confusion. Linehan and Mathews saw O'Hanlon in a modernised Shakespeare play broadcast by RTÉ, and were impressed by the "weird, gormless" face he could pull. Linehan later said, "That was Dougal right there. He was just spot-on and he became our secret weapon. The show took off so quickly because Ardal was so instantly funny."
New Jack City (Father Ted) torments Ted and Dougal. Stack's torments include deliberately driving Ted's car into a wall and then telling him all about it and saying that all that mattered was that he liked it, insulting Ted and his friends in the priesthood, getting Dougal drunk on Jack's whiskey, drilling holes in the living room wall for no particular reason and blasting jungle music at 3 o'clock in the morning (Ted labels him "worse than Hitler", because "you wouldn't find Hitler playing jungle music at 3 in the morning"). Fed up with Father Stack, Ted and Dougal kidnap Father Jack back from Jurassic