Brendan O’Carroll recently confessed he “didn’t know the secret” of the popularity of his chortling blockbuster, Mrs Brown’s Boys (RTÉ One, Friday). He isn’t the only one – since first airing on RTÉ and the BBC in 2011, the lowbrow sitcom has soared ever higher. The iffier the humour, the healthier the ratings – and the more vitriolic the reviews.
Some 14 years in, though, might the gloss have gone off his famous Finglas mammy? Viewing figures are down, and people who previously enjoyed hating the show appear largely indifferent to its return. Nor does O’Carroll himself seem all that engaged during a dreary and unfunny opening episode in which Agnes discovers the joys of podcasting while working through a row with daughter Cathy (O’Carroll’s off-screen wife Jennifer Gibney).
The biggest disappointment is how slick the whole thing is. There aren’t any of the fluffed lines that in the past gave Mrs Brown a seat-of-the-pants charm, while O’Carroll breaks the fourth wall just once, riffing when a character says that something is “pointless”. “It could be worse, I could be the chase,” he says – a reference to two popular quizshows (Pointless and The Chase), which raises a guffaw or two before the scene is restaged.
Agnes and Cathy have a falling-out after Cathy takes up with a fancy-pants podcaster, Roger, who says he wants to improve her “diction” – a hilarious word which O’Carroll mines for several gags. Somewhat inevitably, Roger is played by Simon Delaney, the Dublin character actor who has graced every TV show ever set in Ireland (including this one – he portrayed a different character in the 2014 film Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie).
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Delaney is a good actor, which means that his performance has a jarring quality when set against the pantomime elbow-nudges that are Mrs Brown’s stock in trade. You can tell he’s a top thesp because he stays in character as the dialogue plumbs the depths, such as when Agnes’s pal Birdie (June Rodgers) replies to Cathy’s assertion that Roger wants to exploit the “gap in the market” by saying: “I’ve had a few Rogers exploit my gap in the market!”
There is no God, and we are all staring into the void.
Aside from jokes drop-kicked in from the mid-1970s, Mrs Brown’s Boys’ most consistent quality is its sentimentality, which, as ever, is laid on with a rolling pin. The syrup is uncorked with a vengeance as Agnes uses the podcast to talk about how mothers and daughters don’t always get along and then discusses her love for Cathy. It is massively mawkish – one more sign that, after a decade-plus of delighting fans and scandalising the snobs, the time may have come for Mrs Brown to fade to grey.
