Brendan O'Carroll

New, fourth-wall-smashing sitcom starring Dublin playwright Brendan O'Carroll as an interfering, gutter-mouthed mother- of-six - the TV version of a hilariously rude stage show. We're rarely more than 20 seconds from a "feck", or the more common Anglo-Saxon equivalent - although even the clean one-liners are often pretty wonderful ("When I was 18, I married his son, because of a condition I had called pregnancy").

Mrs Brown's Boys - BBC1, 10.35pm

Remember the 80s sitcom Bread, with Ma Boswell, Joey and grandad? Imagine the very best episode of that with Catherine Tate's Nan in the central role and you have the rough flavour of this brilliant comedy from Dublin comic Brendan O'Carroll.

Potty-mouthed Dublin matriarch Mrs Brown - the creation of comedian Brendan O'Carroll - is a phenomenon in her native land, where she's the star of numerous comic novels and six stage shows. This sitcom is Mrs Brown's first appearance on British screens, where she is liable to startle the uninitiated with the rudimentary nature of her comedy: an old-fashioned blend of silly voices and slapstick, played out in front of a live studio audience who collapse into giggles at the mere mention of the word "willy". O'Carroll won't care what the critics say - the show's already topped the ratings in Ireland - but Mrs Brown's Boys does feel uncomfortably similar to the awful hokey sitcom that Ricky Gervais's character mugged his way through in Extras.

Brendan O'Carroll interview

After that first success on radio I started to feel invincible and to think I was bullet proof so I wrote a movie screenplay about a young Irish boxer. I thought I could walk on water, so I decided to make a film of it but it cost £2.2m, every penny of which I put in myself or borrowed. It was never released so it was a pretty rock bottom time for me.

BBC show uses F-word 34 times in 30 minutes

A new BBC1 sitcom will broadcast the "f-word" every 60 seconds. Mrs Brown's Boys, by Irish comedian Brendan O'Carroll, will go out after the watershed later this month but on the broadcaster's most popular channel.

Brendan O'Carroll interview

Brendan O'Carroll and his merry band of players have just finished recording Mrs Brown's Boys, a six part BBC sitcom, due to screen from the first week of the New Year.

Thin script, blue gags and pure ego

Brendan O'Carroll's pilot slipped beneath our radar when it was shown earlier this year. It certainly is exceptional - as in exceptionally awful.