MEMORY LANE: REMEMBERING "FATHER DOWLING MYSTERIES"

I am fairly certain that I was not aware of the existence of "Father Dowling Mysteries" during its brief (1989 - 1991) run on the air. I freely confess as well that I would not have watched the show even had I known it did in fact exist. The "cozy mystery" was nothing I was remotely interested in as a young man who wanted to see shootouts, fist-fights, car chases and bikini babes in most of my entertainment. As I have ambled into middle age, however, I feel an increasing need to find periodic escape in what is sometimes referred to as "wholesome entertainment," i.e. TV shows and movies which are not replete with cursing, gore, and moral ambiguity. It is not that I have lost my taste or tolerance for these things per se, merely that television and film were meant first and foremost as a form of escape, and the present world is vulgar and amoral enough as it is.

Not having memories of "Father Dowling Mysteries" from its original run, this entry of Memory Lane probably deserves as asterisk; but one of the joys of running your own blog is that you can do whatever the hell you want, and in any case this entry will be largely free of the tedious nostalgia I invariably feel compelled to comment upon, since my viewing of the series came thirty-plus years after it was on the air. There is in any case a reason I am visiting this particular address on the Lane today, one which will become apparent as we explore its candle-lighted interior.

To begin with, "Father Dowling Mysteries" is the sort of TV series which is not made much, if at all, in this horribly cynical age. It is a cozy mystery show with an old-fashioned set of values and strong moral center, "suitable for the whole family," as advertisers used to say when I was a kid. It is just the sort of thing that is fun to watch if you want to be unchallenged, unthreatened, occasionally amused, and modestly engaged. In a sense it's like having tea with your eccentric grandmother. And if that doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, you must understand that there is a real place for entertainment of that type, and that place should be respected.

"FDM" was very loosely adapted from the popular mystery series of the same name by Ralph McInerney, and supposedly influenced -- if you believe Wikipedia -- by G.K. Chesterton's "Father Brown" novels as well. I is the story of Father Francis Dowling (Tom Bosley) and Sister Stephanie (Tracy Nelson), of rough-and-tumble St. Michael's Parish in Chicago. The rotund and cuddly Dowling is a devoted if somewhat embattled priest, none too popular with his bishop, in part because he loves playing amateur detective. The fiesty Stephanie ("Steve" to her friends) is a former reprobate who still knows the streets and is as comfortable with a lockpick (or lipstick) as a rosary, and acts as Dowling's legman and Girl Friday. Together they make a habit of aggravating the local cops by butting their noses into murder mysteries, usually for the purpose of trying to prevent the dull-witted Chicago PD from arresting the wrong man. In this task they are supported by Marie Murkin (Mary Wickes), the irascible parish cook/housekeeper who pretends not to like Dowling, and the bumbling, self-centered and comically ambitious Father Philip Prestwick (James Stephens), who is usually more of a hinderance than a help. These four actually make a family unit of sorts: Dowling is dad, Marie is mom, Steve is the daughter and Prestwick the unwanted relation nobody is willing to throw out into the street.

The show usually follows a formula taken partially from the "Perry Mason" catalog, and "Murder, She Wrote" playbook, which is no surprise, as Bosley left that show to head up this one. It goes like so: A murder is committed, an innocent person is on the hook for it, and our heroes must not only prove the accused didn't do it, but find out who did. This usually involves some derring-do and undercover work, and often culminates with Frank talking the bad guy into a confession while the cops lurk just around the corner waiting to spring. Because it's set in Chicago, there are many Mob stories and plots that center around corrupt officials, crooked cops, etc., but the basic atmosphere of the show is "cozy mystery" and so with a few notable exceptions, the murders and rough stuff are handled in a pretty tame fashion, and a woman in a bikini or a tight cocktail dress is as sexy as things will ever get. Also, although Dowling is a priest and Steve a nun, religion here is often a backdrop and not foreground material: if the series has a theme, it is that faith is great, but good works are what save the day and the soul.

From an objective standpoint, DOWLING has a lot wrong with it, even grading on a curve. The storytelling is generally full of cliches and tropes, and while some of the stories are inventive and a few very cleverly plotted, most of the twists are easy to spot from far away. The dialog varies enormously, from sharply witty and clever to the usual TV dreck of that era, in which the script seems to be pasted together from scraps of the Great Book of Television Cliches. The show is set in Chicago, but actually filmed in Denver (as was "Perry Mason" when it returned), and it certainly looks nothing at all like Chicago, to the point that they may as well just have set it in Denver and been done with it. What's more, like Tracy Nelson herself, the guest actors are usually New Yorkers with heavy New York or Jersey accents, which makes further nonsense of the setting. As for Tom Bosley, he is extremely believable as a priest, but not so much as an amateur sleuth/deductive genius. Unlike Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher, Dowling's deductive faculties never really ring true. He comes off as merely nosy rather than possessing any genius at detection. There were also times the show also struggled with its identity: three or four episodes are purely supernatural in character. Now, as a general rule, you can do that all the time or none of the time, and if you want to work the middle, you'd better have a very deft touch (like "Magnum, P.I."). I'm not sure Dowling talking to the devil constitutes a light touch.

What makes DOWLING rise above its flaws is its wholesome attitude. In this day and age, every protagonist is either an outright criminal or so tortured, troubled and morally ambiguous it's hard to tell the difference between protagonist and antagonist. There's a place for Noir-type storytelling, but it should not RE-place conventional protagonists and yes, even heroes. Dowling represents the radical idea that there are good and selfless people out there who want to do mostly good and selfless things...period. Steve represents the idea that people can overcome their past without pretending it never happened...period. Marie is caring and kind beneath her crusty exterior, the “stepmom with the heart of gold,” and even Prestwick, who is venal, shallow, clueless, selfishly ambitious, and generally annoying, is curiously likeable, because his failings contains no malice. There's something comforting about all of this, a sort of emotional atmosphere which I found myself strongly responding to. What's more, while the show is necessarily steeped in Catholic iconography and ritual, it's not preachy: Bosley himself was Jewish in real life, and I think the main message is not religious per se, but moral: good must fight evil, and must not expect a reward for doing so. You fight not for riches or glory but because it's the right thing to do...period.

During its short life, "Dowling" produced 43 episodes and one TV movie, appeared on two different networks, and managed to employ just about every working character actor in Hollywood, as well as many young actors who went on to considerable fame or success in later life, including Anthony La Paglia, Tony Todd, Colm Meany, and Michelle Forbes. It made no lasting pop-cultural marks and certainly never threatened "Murder, She Wrote" in either ratings or popularity, which I'm fairly certain was the intention of its producers. When it disappeared, it did so quietly, and I'm fairly certain that while it is fondly remembered by its small audience -- look at the loving tributes on Amazon reviews -- there won't be any "Father Dowling" conventions or reboots any time soon. So why talk about it at all? The answer to this is digressive and complicated but worth the trip, which I'll make as short as possible, impatient as we all are of destination.

I've already touched on the place which "wholesome entertainment" has, or ought to have, in our lives. It should exist, at the very least, as an option; an alternative to the dark, gritty, morally ambiguous taletelling which abounds everywhere. It provides distraction and relief from the real world, which is necessarily often gray and ugly and replete with unhappy endings. But there is also the greater purpose that this sort of thing serves, the service it provides which we often do not appreciate enough in the noisy, speed-crazed age in which we live. It is what George Orwell referred to in "Coming Up For Air" as the "book-pipe-fire" atmosphere, which the cozy mystery (among other fictive genres) so easily summons. When one chains the door, switches off the phone, builds the fire, boils the tea (fortified, perhaps, with some Irish whiskey), and sits down in one's favorite chair, what is it that they seek when they pick up the book or the remote control? Is it the world on the other side of that locked door, from which they have just returned, or is it something else -- something different?

When we look at the history of television and film, we see that "adult" themes began to make themselves more and more readily felt in the years immediately following World War Two, when returning soldiers demanded that their entertainment correspond more accurately to the darker, more cynical world that war and military service had exposed them to. This movement towards gritty storytelling, toward the protagonist as opposed to the hero, toward the unhappy rather than the happy ending, reached its apotheosis in the 1970s, when ugliness and brutality became the norm in film and increasingly common on television. The good and the bad guys were generally indistinguishable in outlook and method; only the causes they served tended to differ. This was probably a necessary thing, and certainly it was inevitable, but it also left audiences with fewer and fewer places to go where the deeper purpose of entertainment was to be found: escape. It is one thing to insist that a film or a TV series reflect, as accurately as possible, the world we live in; it is another to destroy the distinction between the world we live in and the fantasy world we are trying to reach through these self-same mediums. After all, we already live in the real world: why the hell should we turn on a TV and get more of the same? The very purpose of these mediums is to divert us from reality, to bend the rules of existence so we can produce different behaviors and different outcomes than those we can expect in our everyday lives.

The very concept of a "cozy mystery" is somewhat fantastic, in that it reduces one of the ugliest acts inaginable, murder, into something suitable for comfortable, fireside entertainment. Indeed, the mystery genre itself presupposes something which does not obtain in real life, i.e. that the mystery is always solved, the murderer always caught or at least identified. When you fire up "Father Dowling Mysteries" you may not know much, but you know Dowling will get his man -- or woman, regardless of the odds arrayed against him. But this is also precisely why we watch such things. The insistence on realism which pervades all forms of entertainment today creates by its very existence a dissonance within our minds and hearts, because TV and film were meant as funhouse mirrors, not windows. And this is where the strength of "Dowling" and its ilk rests: this is why, despite is numerous flaws and failings, it is just as appealing, or perhaps more appealing, in 2024 as it was in 1989. It is not giving us the truth; it is presenting us with a stylized rejection of reality in which, whatever tragedies and dangers are borne by our heroes, the truth will always out and the murderer always end up in the dock. And this is why, when it's cold outside in more ways than just the temperature, it doesn't hurt to chuck the cell phone, put the kettle on, hoist up your feet, and escape to St. Michael's Parish for an hour or two. After all, the real world will still be there when you return.