Episode no. Episode 9 of series 2 Original air date 3 May 1996 | Directed by Declan Lowney | |
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Written by Graham Linehan, Arthur Mathews | ||
"New Jack City" is the ninth episode of the second series of the Channel 4 television sitcom Father Ted.
Contents
At the inaugural Ted Fest in February 2007, it was voted the best Father Ted episode.
Synopsis
Father Jack contracts "Hairy Hands Syndrome" (level 6 out of a maximum 12) and is sent to St. Clabbert's Hospital for wayward priests (jokingly named "Jurassic Park" by the Clergymen of Craggy Island, after the film of the same title).
A new priest replaces Jack while he is on leave: Father Fintan Stack, an obnoxious, rude and destructive priest, 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 without proper authorization from Ted, 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 Park. Jack, upon returning to Craggy Island's parochial house, finds out about Stack giving his booze hoard to Dougal. This angers Jack to do what are presumably terrible things to Stack, however he is stopped from taking his revenge when both Ted and Jack notice that Stack has caught the "Hairy Hands Syndrome" from Jack's ancient, diseased chair. Stack is sent to Jurassic Park (where he still insists on playing jungle music), and everything returns to normal (though Jack is locked in a hermetically sealed chamber to prevent him passing the hairy hands syndrome onto Ted and Dougal, which Ted considers an improvement).
Production
Pat Laffan auditioned for the role of Father Stack. He went on to appear as Pat Mustard in "Speed 3", an episode in the third series. Fr. Stack's jungle music is Limb By Limb (Dj SS Remix) by Cutty Ranks and The Way by DJ Taktix. The episode was named after the film New Jack City. Mrs. Doyle parodies the opening scene of Dont Look Back, a 1967 documentary film by D.A. Pennebaker that principally covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour of the United Kingdom.