Arthur Mathews writes absurd exchanges that work because nobody stops to explain the absurdity. We rate him highly as a collaborator: Father Ted shows how carefully his jokes are built, even when the simplest ones recur too often.
Fi1m perspective
Dermot Morgan lets the frustration show, while O’Hanlon seems untouched by it. In Father Ted (1995), the pause between them is often as funny as the next line. Arthur Mathews and co-creator Graham Linehan give the exchange another complication just when it seems to have finished, and the performers allow it time to grow sillier. We laughed at Morgan’s exasperation, then laughed again because O’Hanlon did not appear to register it.
The writing takes clerical status seriously enough to see the joke in men who cannot live up to it. Morgan’s Father Ted Crilly occupies the centre of a group whose titles do little to disguise their foolishness. Mathews and Linehan are good at keeping these people talking without letting anyone announce how ridiculous the conversation has become. The broadest jokes do recur too often, but the ensemble usually makes the repetition forgivable.
Father Ted was the breakthrough, but Mathews’s work also runs through sketch comedy: he contributed to The Fast Show (1994) and co-created Big Train (1998). The latter began in partnership with Linehan, with Mathews writing its second series solo. Contributions to Black Books (2000) kept him working in sitcoms, while Toast of London (2012), co-created with Matt Berry, brought another sustained character comedy. Across those formats, he keeps finding room for absurd behaviour in recognisable situations.
Some solo work, including Hippies (1999) and Big Train’s second series, has been regarded as less consistent than his collaborations. We would be wary of turning that into a rule about who supplied the good jokes. In Father Ted, the writing leaves actors time to react, and their restraint helps the next absurdity land without a more emphatic delivery. That is a substantial skill for a comedy writer to bring to a partnership. Start with Father Ted, where Morgan and O’Hanlon make even familiar foolishness worth waiting for.
Biography
Arthur Mathews is an Irish comedy writer and actor. With Graham Linehan he co-created and co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted (1995–1998), on which he also served as associate producer and appeared in several acting roles.
He has contributed to sketch shows including The Fast Show (1994), Harry Enfield and Chums and The Day Today, and to series such as Big Train (1998–2002), Brass Eye, Black Books (2000) and Toast of London (2013). With Linehan he previously co-wrote the sitcom Paris (1994).
Mathews was born in 1959 in County Meath, Ireland.
