Father Ted Crilly one day after the third series of "Father Ted" completed recording, and was posthumously given the Award for Best Comedy Performance at the British Academy Television Awards 1999. In November 2014, the "Irish Examiner" named Ted the greatest Irish TV character, calling him "a rare example of a straight man providing almost as many chuckles as his compatriots" and praising his characterisation as an "upstanding-yet-oh-so-faintly-slippery man of the cloth" as true to life for many rural Irish viewers. Father Ted Crilly Father Ted Crilly is the title character of the Channel 4 sitcom "Father Ted". Created by Graham Linehan and
Father Dougal McGuire and very, very strange. I saw Dougal as very doglike, very puppyish and lovable, and really loyal to Ted." After the first episode aired, Ben Thompson of "The Independent" singled out O'Hanlon as "the real star of the show", and said that Dougal's "holy-fool innocence" as "worthy of James Stewart". Writing for the "Irish Examiner", Ed Power said that while the "meme-worthy" Dougal and Jack received the most attention at the time of broadcast, Morgan's straight-man performance was the highlight in retrospect. Morgan attributed the show's success to the appealing double-act formed by Dougal, "an idiot who knows nothing", and