Lentorama 2009: Great(?) Moments in Catholics on Television

November 1, 1987: Father Dowling solves his first mystery

The creation of Notre Dame professor Ralph McInerny, Father Dowling was the ecclesiastical equivalent of Jessica Fletcher, an amateur with a knack for solving crimes. Unlike Fletcher, who was the angel of death in her small Maine town, Father Dowling lived in a gritty neighborhood in Chicago, where crime isn't exactly unknown. The comparison to Murder, She Wrote is also fairly apt as the man tapped to play Father Dowling, Tom Bosley, played Cabot Cove sherrif Amos Tupper.

Father Dowling was assisted in his crime solving by Sister Stephanie "Stevie" Oskowski (played by Tracy Nelson), a streetwise nun who grew up in the neighborhood, and thus knew its characters as well as certain skills, like how to hot wire a car. Father Philip Prestwick (James Stephens) worked for the Archbishop, would often drop in to keep an eye on Father Dowling, often when housekeeper Marie Murkin (Mary Wickes) was serving dinner.

While the pilot aired in 1987, the series didn't begin until 1989 due to a writers' strike, and after its first abbreviated season NBC decided to drop it. ABC stepped in and picked it up, giving the show two more full seasons before excommunicating it.

(On a personal note, my dad was a big fan of the show, and today would have been his 70th birthday. Good thing I didn't use this earlier on.)