Mrs. Brown's Boys

#AskMrsBrown: Your Questions Answered! (Part 2)

Thanks for sending in all your questions for #AskMrsBrown. Our favourite Irish Matriarch has been reading through them, and offers up her pearls of wisdom in the video below. Has Mrs. Brown answered your question?

Brendan O'Carroll's offbeat Irish sitcom continues. In this episode, Agnes (O'Carroll) and Winnie (Eilish O'Carroll) are disappointed not to be invited to Maria Nicholson's (Fiona O'Carroll) hen party, but decide to crash it anyway. A hit in Ireland but, so far, its hard to understand why.

Mrs Brown's Boys is so bad it's (almost) funny

Mrs Brown's Boys might appeal to its middle-aged female audience, but who's really having the last laugh?

#AskMrsBrown: Your Questions Answered!

Mrs. Brown has been rather busy this week, meddling in her son Mark's marriage to Betty. However, she's taken time out to read through and respond to your questions. So see if you have got a reply in the video below!

Mrs Brown's Boys: mainstream comedy for the middle-aged

Part of me wonders what the BBC was thinking with Mrs Brown's Boys - another part can't help laughing at Brendan O'Carroll's old-fashioned sitcom.

Mrs Brown's Boys 1.2 review

I gave this new BBC1 comedy another spin last night, having been impressed by its raw energy and foulmouthed verve the week before. It was appreciably less manic, which was nice, but I think I have a better grasp on why it's still not working for me.

More potty-mouthed panto from Brendan O'Carroll and his updated Old Mother Riley act. Meddling ratbag Agnes Brown ("I was so long in labour they had to shave me twice") thinks her children are keeping too many secrets from her, such as the real reason why Mark's wife has kicked him out of the house. As usual, the earthy antics are offset by a sentimental streak as thick as your arm. We have come to fecking hug and learn, after all.

We love, love, LOVE this comedy. If you missed last week's opening episode, catch up on iPlayer. You won't be disappointed (unless, as we previously warned, you're offended by swearing).

The central character, Irish matriarch Agnes Brown, mum to six grown-up children, would be the bossy old bag from hell if she were real.

On TV she's nothing short of effing brilliant. Tonight we meet two more fruits of her loins. There's Mark, who is having marital problems, and Rory, whom she warns not "to get some girl into trouble" when he goes out - oblivious to his feminine robe, highlighted hair and manicured nails. "She's very posh," he says. "So are we," retorts Agnes. "We have a series on the BBC."

This mixing reality with fiction is brilliant, as is keeping in the bouts of corpsing. That said, the show does have two major faults. It's only 20-odd minutes long and there are just four more episodes left.

Mrs Brown's Boys: TV Sitcom Review

New to the BBC is Brendan O'Carroll's long running stage creation Mrs Brown's Boys. A sitcom which features Brendan himself dragged up as an old Irish mother of six. The show will grab the headlines initially for its language as a lot of the humour features Mrs Brown's incredibly course ramblings being saturated in Fecks and Fucks. Somehow this language pleases the real live studio audience but how I'm not exactly sure.

Mrs Brown's Boys isn't so much a sitcom as a full frontal assault on the senses. It is raucous, vulgar, sentimental, loud, infantile, audacious, irreverent, outrageous, inane, frequently frustrating and often hilarious. The jokes come thick and fast, with several circumventing quality control en route and at least one - a naked hand being described as "Sooty in the nude" - deserving a place in the annals of comedy history.

Star and writer Brendan O'Carroll dons drag for the title role - an Irish mammy forever interfering in her adult children's lives. He/she is on screen throughout and it's fair to describe the performance as all-embracing, leaving the supporting cast with little to do but stand, stare and sometimes suppress giggles.

There is an unapologetically old-fashioned, almost music hall, feel to proceedings, with O'Carroll embracing the proud cross-dressing traditions of Les Dawson, Old Mother Riley and the Two Ronnies, but with added profanity.

In another post-modern twist the show deliberately assumes all the conventions of the traditional studio-based TV sitcom, then takes great pleasure in subverting them. Mrs Brown crosses over sets, talks to the camera and even admonishes the live audience for rendering a sympathetic sigh ("It's a man in a dress, for feck's sake").

Episode one left me fully entertained but slightly shell-shocked, harbouring serious doubts that it can sustain such a high level of manic energy for an entire series. We shall just have to wait and see if Mrs Brown wins our hearts, or wears us out.