Celebrity

Mrs Brown’s Boys refuses to die and whoever wrote this Metro headline, give yourself a pay rise

Poke Staff. Updated January 2nd, 2024

Mrs Brown’s Boys was back on BBC1 this Christmas with a two-part – two-part! – festive special.

And it’s hard to believe we know but apparently even fans of the show were not entirely bowled over by the Brendan O’Carroll comedy this time around.

It’s long been probably the most divisive show on telly, of course, and one which is no stranger to criticism.

But surely no headline cut deeper than this fabulous effort from the Metro, which is no stranger to winning our headline of the week and has only gone and done it again.

Oof (and you can read the full Metro story here).

And it took us back to this fabulous Observer review of the show from back in the day which you surely can’t possibly have failed to have missed by now.

But it always rewards repeat reading …

I decided not to lazily write off Mrs Brown’s Boys. It remains absurdly successful, despite critics having generally trashed Brendan O’Carroll’s creation as demeaning, cheap, grotesque, . So I watched it, and was surprised. It’s all of these insults, yes, but the immersive experience is actually, shockingly, worse than expected. Sentimental to retching-point, homophobic, itch-lousy with single entendres, somehow managing to be both twee and vulgar, achingly unfunny, it made The Vicar of Dibley look like Father Ted.

I suspect those of us in our high ivory metropolitan-elite towers (translation: humans who paid even nugatory attention to at least one class in school) missed a trick in 2016: the popularity of this shameless excrescence (I can now write it off after due diligence), which was voted by Radio Times readers the best sitcom of the 21st century, should have given a huge clue to the Brexit vote.

And also this effort from Metro which won our headline of the year for 2023.

Follow @angrypiln for lots more of this sort of thing (no, not Mrs Brown’s Boys).

Source @angrypiln