A good-hearted frontiersman dresses as a priest to start an orphanage for a group of kids whose homes have been destroyed by an evil mining manager. Father Murphy, an NBC series about an 1870s gold miner who occasionally pretends to be a Catholic priest in order to keep officials from closing his orphanage school, premiered in a special two-hour presentation on Tuesday. Nov. 3 1981. Merlin Olsen stars in the title role.