TV – It’s a Religion!

Exidor

Check out the episode “Mork Runs Away" on Mork and Mindy - Season 1 - Disc 1 (1978)

Cora Hudson: That man is an absolute raving lunatic.

Exidor: Madam, you flatter me.

You’ve got to love a man who starts his own cult and thinks Mork’s pet caterpillar Bob is Abraham Lincoln reincarnated. Mork meets Exidor when he moves to a boarding house to give Mindy more space with her boyfriend Brad. Exidor is the leader of Friends of Venus, a group not a million miles away from Scientologists. He believes Venus will blow up the Earth and send a modern day ark/space ship that will rescue one thousand followers. Unfortunately the Venusians seem to abandon Exidor, leading to athlete and actor O.J. Simpson becoming his new object of worship.

Sister Bertrille

Check out the episodes “The Great Casino Robbery Parts 1 and 2” on The Flying Nun -Season 2 - Disc 2 (1967)

Sister Bertrille: What’s Mary Poppins got that I haven’t got?

Before she became every producer’s first choice when casting neurotic mothers, back in the sixties Sally Field played two of that decade’s most likeable and loveable TV characters – surfer girl Gidget, and the flying novice nun from the Convent San Tanco in Puerto Rico. Sister Bertrille was making ‘the habit’ hip almost ten years before Sister Janet Mead recorded her acoustic rock version of “The Lord’s Prayer”; and forget Julio Iglesias, the Convent San Tanco’s benefactor and resident playboy Carlos Ramirez (Alejandro Ray) is the coolest Latino to ever hit pop culture. In this double episode, Sister Bertrille’s old family friend "Uncle" Reggie Overton Perkins takes a job as a security expert at Carlos’ casino. When the joint is robbed, the flying nun must convince Captain Fomento of Reggie’s innocence. Great cameos from the TV icons Alan Hale Jr. (The Skipper in Gilligan’s Island) and Dick Gautier (Get Smart’s Hymie).

Father Dan Moulton

Check out the episode 598 on Prisoner (1979) - Volume 5: The Great Escapes (1979)

More sixties film character Billy Jack than E Street’s try-hard Reverend Bob, Dan is in touch with the kids at Wentworth Detention Centre. His musical tastes are hipper too; inmate Lexie Patterson’s Boy George obsession is simply mainstream next to Dan’s love of Australian indie bands demonstrated by The Sunnyboys t-shirt he loves to be seen in. His connection with the prison comes from his work with Rita Connors’ bikie gang, The Conquerers. It deepens when he starts a relationship with the governor, Ann Reynolds. When a bikie gang feud erupts, you just know the free-wheeling and free-loving couple is headed for trouble. In this episode, Dan has to tell Rita, on her way to court, that her partner Slasher and brother Bongo have been injured in a fight – one of them fatally.

Father Ralph de Bricassart

Check out The Thorn Birds – Disc 1

Meggie Cleary: Ralph will never know that he has a son. And if you say anything to him, I'll be as merciful to you as you have been to me all these years!

Twenty years after he set hearts a flutter as the dashing Dr. James Kildare, Richard Chamberlain again has fans swooning as the amorous Father Ralph de Bricassart. The American mini-series about ‘forbidden love’ between a Catholic priest and a woman is adapted from Colleen McCullough’s epic saga set in outback Australia - but was shot in California and Hawaii. Father Ralph is banished by the church hierarchy to remote Gillanbone. He wards off the advances of Mary Carson (Barbara Stanwyck), elderly owner of the sheep station Drogheda, only to fall for her niece Meggie Cleary. Meggie is played by Rachel Ward, and it was on set that she met future husband Bryan Brown; so we have The Thorn Birds to thank for the Ward-Brown Twilight Zone-ish TV series, Twisted Tales!

Kwai Chang Caine

Check out the episode “Crossties” on Kung Fu - Season 2 - Disc 3 (1972)

Master Po: What do you hear?

Kwai Chang Caine: I hear the grasshopper.

Wandering through America’s West in the 1870s, half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine is like a human version of The Littlest Hobo; but while that stray German shepherd roamed from town to town helping those in need, Caine was searching for his half-brother Danny. Having avenged the murder of his spiritual guide Master Po by killing the emperor’s nephew, he was forced to flee China and on the run from bounty hunters and assassins. Caine was into herbal remedies and healing long before ‘wellbeing-ness’ became a buzz word of our new millennium. In this episode, the bamboo flute playing, soft-spoken peacemaker is caught in the middle of a land rights battle between farmers and the railroad. A great guest cast includes Harrison Ford, Denver Pyle (Uncle Jesse from The Dukes of Hazzard and Mad Jack in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams) and the Scorpio Killer from Dirty Harry, the always creepy Andy Robinson.

Tripitaka

Check out the episode “Monkey Turns Nursemaid” on Monkey - Volume 1 (Episodes 1-3) (1978)

Monkey: I always thought Buddha was a fella!

TV kids of the 80s will recall weeknights on the ABC starting at 6:00pm – episodes of Monkey followed by The Kenny Everett Video Show, Mike Nesmith’s (from The Monkees) Elephant Parts or the ad nauseam playing of Ultravox’s Vienna or Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight film clips. Go back to the beginning of the series as Buddha sends the messenger Boddhisattva Kuan-ya the Compassionate to choose a holy man they think is up to the task of traveling from China to India in search of the holy scriptures that will bring peace to the world. Boy priest Hsuan Tsang is chosen and re-named Tripitaka, and teams up with Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy in the English dubbed version of their adventures. Watch out for the best talking horse this side of Wilbur Post’s stable.

Father Mackay

Check out the episode “Brideshead Revisited” on Brideshead Revisited - Disc 4 (1981)

Niall Toibin has almost made a career out of playing men of the cloth. He’s played a priest in a guest role in Minder, and was Father MacAnally in Ballykissangel (parish priest and Father Peter Clifford’s superior). In the wonderful television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Niall again dons the collar. The penultimate episode sees Lord Marchmain (Sir Laurence Olivier) coming home to Brideshead after twenty five years away to die. The question his family faces is whether he will accept the last rites (or Extreme Unction) from a Catholic priest when his time comes. At first he turns Father Mackay away and admonishes eldest son Bridey for his impertinence in inviting the priest in the first place – even going as far as changing his will. As Lord Marchmain’s condition deteriorates though, Father Mackay is called again. This time Lord Marchmain gives his sign of acceptance after being anointed.

Father John Patrick Francis Mulcahy

Check out the episode “Mulcahy's War” on M*A*S*H - Season 5 - Disc 1 (1980)

B.J.: Father, I thought we had an agreement: we save the bodies, and you save the souls.

Father Mulcahy: My. I hope I didn't violate any union regulations!

A soldier shoots himself in the foot to avoid further combat and is counselled by Father Mulcahy. However the soldier questions Mulcahy’s ability to empathise, the 4077th’s padre not having seen action himself. Next chance he gets, Mulcahy is out to get experience under fire. Against Colonel Potter’s orders, Father heads out with Radar to pick up a soldier from a makeshift medical station. The soldier has a chest wound and has severe breathing difficulties – it’s time for M*A*S*H to reach for probably the second most common storyline (behind the ‘evil twin’ twist) in TV history – the one where a tracheotomy is performed (normally using a biro). Armed with only a pen knife and eye dropper, will instructions from Hawkeye relayed over a radio be enough to turn Father Mulcahy in to Doctor Mulcahy?

Sister Roberta

Check out the episode “The Conversion” on Seinfeld - Season 5 - Disc 3 (1990)

Older Latvian Orthodox priest: What aspect of the faith do you find particularly attractive?

George: I think the hats.

When his girlfriend Sasha says she must break up with him for religious reasons, George decides to convert and become a member of the Latvian Orthodox church. While waiting to meet George outside the church, Kramer catches the eye of a nun, Sister Roberta. The sister becomes infatuated with Kramer, as he possesses the ‘kavorka’ - the lure of the animal. It’s actually a curse where that person will draw uncontrollable others lustily to them. When Sister Roberta is talking forsaking her religion for him, Kramer seeks guidance from the church. Look out for Kramer answering the door with masses of cloves of garlic around his neck.

Father Jack Delahunty

Check out episode five of Brides of Christ (1991)

Fifteen years after a young Simon Burke emerged playing a boarder at a catholic boy’s school in Fred Schepisi’s The Devil’s Playground, he’s playing a radical priest in this lauded Australian mini-series. Brides of Christ follows a group of nuns at a Sydney convent in the late swinging sixties. Sister Paul (Lisa Hensley) has joined the convent at eighteen and unquestioningly fulfilled her teaching duties ever since. Six years on she heads home for a family wedding where her world is turned upside down by the challenging views of Father Jack Delahunty. A young Naomi Watts stars as Frances, a boarder struggling with convent life in episode 2, while Russell Crowe features as a Vietnam War conscript.