Career
He first came to prominence playing a liberal catholic priest - Father Sheehy - in RTÉ"s iconic rural drama The Riordans. Tony Doyle also appeared in the first Minder episode, "Gunfight at the Oklahoma Laundrette", playing a drunken Irishman. His most famous film role saw Tony as the head of the SAS, Colonel Hadley, in the 1982 British film Who Dares Wins.
He died at Street Thomas"s Hospital in Lambeth, London, England.
Brian Quigley, Doyle"s Ballykissangel character, was written out of the show in the first episode of the final series where Quigley fakes his own suicide (he supposedly drowned himself) and flees to Brazil. The Tony Doyle Bursary for New Writing was launched by the British Broadcasting Corporation following his death.
Cranitch subsequently starred in the British Broadcasting Corporation detective series McCready & Daughter, which had been written with Doyle in mind.