Brendan O'Carroll

The Security Men is not a revival, being a new one-off comedy written by Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope (who together wrote The Fattest Man In Britain). But it does star Bobby Ball - of Cannon & fame - continuing his unlikely career renaissance after turns in Mount Pleasant, Last Of The Summer Wine and Not Going Out. And the thing is, Bobby Ball is still basically doing the same act as he did with Tommy Cannon every Saturday on ITV in the 80s. OK, not the bit where he pinged his braces and yelled, "Rock on Tommy!" but the naughty boy stuff is basically unchanged. He even, alarmingly, does the moonwalk at one point.

Here he plays one of four security men who are nominally guarding a shopping centre which - further compounding the sense of déjà vu - features a Wimpy. Their nights are filled with banter and bets, chiefly on how many cones the jobsworth boss will put out to guard a small liquid spillage on the floor. One night they turn off the alarms and sneak out while he's on his break, so they can watch a boxing match. Unfortunately, when the alarms go back on, they realise they've missed a robbery (not of the Wimpy, but a jewellers). They're in trouble. "And where," cries Ball's character Duckers, "are we going to find another job that's mostly sleeping?"

Amiable, harmless antics ensue as the team try to cover up their mistake. There's nothing here that would frighten your great-grandma - not even the running joke about Duckers' wife posing for nude pictures ("it's not often you see a 60-year-old woman with piercings"). It also stars Brendan O'Carroll - better known in female garb as Mrs Brown, from the critic-defyingly-successful sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys, itself an unashamed throwback to the age before alternative comedy. Don't worry about Tommy Cannon not being here though: he and Ball are still mates and tour churches with a religious show. Really.

How the 'worst comedy ever made' became a smash hit

The critics loathe it, calling it 'crass', and 'lazy trash'. But Brendan O'Carroll's sitcom has attracted an enormous, loyal following. Where did it come from and why is it so loved?

Brendan O'Carroll: 'I write for audience, not critics'

Brendan O'Carroll has said that he cannot go about pleasing critics with Mrs Brown's Boys.

Brendan O'Carroll says Mrs Brown's Boys saved him

Brendan O'Carroll says Mrs Brown's Boys saved his life when he plunged into depression over a £2.2million debt.

More than seven million of you watched Mrs Brown's Boys - Brendan O'Carroll's fabulously foul-mouthed, warm-hearted cross-dressing Irish comedy - last week. Now that Mrs Brown is in her third series, the BBC must be wondering what the heck it was playing at when it assumed that My Family was the sitcom British TV audiences really wanted.

It isn't - this is: a middle-aged man in a permed wig and a silly frock chatting to the audience like an old-fashioned throwback to the days of The Dick Emery Show only with better jokes. Much, much better jokes.

The LOL-factor in Mrs Brown's Boys throws a great one-liner at you roughly three times a minute and, despite what the haters say, the joke isn't just the bad language - that's merely there for punctuation.

If you took away the plot, the silly costumes and all the "fecks" and just kept the gags, you'd still be left with a great stand-up set.

This week in Agnes Brown's world it's Valentine's Day and she's about to try her hand at internet dating. Her dim friend Winnie has a sex education book. Put all that together and you've got more comedy gold.

Created by and starring a genuine comedic genius, Brendan O'Carroll, Mrs. Brown's Boys is just-about the funniest, cleverest and most seemingly-effortless comedy on British television, deconstructing the classic structures of conventional sitcom and adding great clumps of Rabelaisian filth.

In a way, this defiantly old-fashioned adult panto is TV's brightest emblem of the true spirit of Christmas, seeing as the only reasoned response to watching it is a solemnly uttered "Jesus Christ."

The argument in favour is that it appeals to an audience who have been ignored for too long, namely those overlooked millions who shriek with mirth at the very idea of a man in drag saying rude words and brandishing a vibrator. I can't argue with its popularity, but I can argue that it's a crass, depressing, lazy shriek of badly written garbage.

The only thing that could do more damage to our beloved comedy tradition of cross-dressing is if George Osborne personally demolished a trail of orphanages while dressed as Carmen Miranda.

Anyway, the BBC, in an extraordinary act of cruelty, have foisted not one but two Mrs Brown Christmas specials on us this year (Christmas Eve, 10.15pm, and Boxing Day, 9.30pm, BBC1). And wouldn't you know it, they're atrocious.

I'll give the limelight-hogging O'Carroll one grudging point for at least trying to make them as Christmassy as possible. Mrs B writes a nativity play in which she stars as the Virgin Mary. There's a bit of slapstick business with a Christmas tree, which is practically de rigueur. It's not at all funny, of course, but it's there.

Otherwise it's dismal business as usual: every useless gag is painfully signposted from miles away, before the whole thing degenerates into a horribly cynical puddle of forced, fake, unearned pathos. Tonight's Christmas Eve episode actually ends with Mrs B eulogising her dead dad to the strains of a music box. And this following 25 minutes of crude slapstick and "fecks" in which she's portrayed as a thoroughly unsympathetic ratbag. They'd be better off calling it "Mrs Brown's Schizoid Circus of Doom".

Fundamentally, I'd like to see Brendan O'Carroll introduce the Christmas institution of announcing your retirement from television.

Mrs Brown's Boys - 'We are not the Waltons'

Mrs Brown's Boys has been a surprise success - winning a Bafta for best sitcom and gathering up to eight million viewers on BBC One. It returns for a third series, starting with two Christmas specials on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Its creator and star Brendan O'Carroll explains how it took 20 years to become an overnight success.

Marmite nature of Mrs Brown

The first time I saw Brendan O'Carroll on stage, I laughed until I cried. Mrs Agnes Brown had finally made her long-awaited Edinburgh debut. That was in 2008 at the Playhouse. I found him funny. Still do.