Brendan O'Carroll pilots men's mental health sitcom Shedites for BBC
- The Mrs Brown's Boys team is piloting a new sitcom about lonely men finding friendship and purpose in their sheds for the BBC
- Written by Paddy Houlihan and produced by BBC Studios, the comedy stars Brendan O'Carroll and Tommy Cannon
- "I've been advocating for the BBC to make this show for a long time because as well as being really funny, it highlights men's mental health" said O'Carroll
Brendan O'Carroll and the Mrs Brown's Boys team are piloting a new sitcom for BBC One about lonely men and their sheds.
A 30-minute pilot of Shedites was shot in April after several years of development. It was written by Paddy Houlihan, who now co-writes Mrs Brown's Boys with O'Carroll, and stars as Dermot Brown in the long-running BBC One sitcom.
The pilot is directed by Ian FitzGibbon (Hullraisers, Damned) and produced by O'Carroll and Owen Bell (The Tuckers, The Farm) for BBC Studios (Here We Go, Mammoth), British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
Speaking to the Irish Sun in December, O'Carroll said that he planned to star alongside Tommy Cannon in the sitcom, playing a character called Jimmy, with the Cannon and Ball star as his best mate.
"No one is going to mistake me for Mrs Brown 'cause I'll have a beard and a moustache in this" he told the newspaper.
He added: "I've been advocating for the BBC to make this show for a long time because as well as being really funny, it highlights men's mental health.
"It's not something men talk about, but it's got easier because of the men's shed movement which has sprung up in UK and Ireland.
"There's a kitchen, a card table and all that but even more important, men can go there and talk through their problems."
O'Carroll previously starred with Cannon's late double act partner Bobby Ball in Caroline Aherne's one-off ITV comedy The Security Men in 2013.
Prior to the pilot being commissioned, O'Carroll's son Danny, who plays Buster Brady in Mrs Brown's Boys, told the Sunday World that he and Houlihan "would be the youngest characters in it".
"My dad said he'd be one of the characters in it too, which is super," he said last year. "It's a perfect character for him. He's a great actor, the part he has you'd nearly say it was written for him."
Established to help men take part in local activities and enjoy the company of others, with the aim of improving wellbeing, The Men's Sheds Association is the UK's largest men's mental health charity.
Harry Enfield, Seann Walsh and Kevin Bishop made a non-broadcast pilot in 2022 called Man Cave, about a bunch of misfits who gather in their neighbour's man cave. Written by Bishop and produced by Spirit Studios (The Stand Up Sketch Show), the comedy never made it to screen.
As BCG revealed last month, Mrs Brown's Boys is returning to BBC One in December with two Christmas specials.
Running for 49 episodes since 2011, the sitcom, which stars O'Carroll as working-class Dublin matriarch Agnes Brown, and his family as her family, has proved consistently popular with audiences but is loathed by critics and the television industry.
BBC Comedy boss Jon Petrie defended the show after a press event last month, calling Mrs Brown "an iconic comedy character ... it's made me laugh many times and seeing Mrs Brown's Boys live is an unforgettable experience - I feel very lucky that I've had the chance to witness it and I'm proud to have it in the BBC comedy stable".
In the Irish Sun interview, O'Carroll suggested that Shedites doesn't necessarily signal the end for Mrs Brown's Boys.
"It doesn't worry me, because I think we have tapped into that Benny Hill element" he said. "Comedy got to a stage where it got very clever. It became opinionated and very personal instead of being funny!
"And one of the things that made Mrs Brown successful was that we tapped into an audience that comedy left behind . . . so it doesn't worry me.
"But if some young buck comes along and has a new show and pushes us off the scene, that's the way the business goes. That's the way it's supposed to be.
"But right now I think Mrs Brown is peaking rather than being the old thing."