Mrs. Brown's Boys

Mrs Brown's Boys: I love the lines that aren't scripted

Welcome to the world of Agnes Brown. It's a world where family comes first, authority is to be challenged, and everything always works out in the end.

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.

Mrs Brown's Boys: BBC One's latest foul-mouthed sitcom

BBC One's new sitcom featuring Irish comedian Brendan O'Carroll may startle viewers with its frequent use of the f-word.

#AskMrsBrown: Send in your questions!

You know those Agony Aunts who say they've been through everything? They've got nothing on Agnes Brown. Mother. Widow. Survivor. She's set wayward son Dermot back on the straight and narrow. She's helped daughter Cathy get through a messy divorce. Now Mrs. Brown wants to know how she can help you... by answering your questions.

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.

Move over Dame Edna, here comes Mrs. Brown

Move over Dame Edna, Mrs. Brown invades Great Britain might be a better way to describe the newest situation comedy, Mrs. Brown's Boys, when it premieres on BBC One beginning this Monday, 21 February.

Making Mrs Brown's Boys

Comedy producer Stephen McCrum (Mongrels, Coming of Age, Two Pints of Lager...) has an eye for spotting new talent. The mighty Mr McCrum tells us how he discovered outrageous Mrs. Brown and brought her to Sitcomland...

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.