SH0CK: Mrs. Brown’s Boys ɑnti-fɑns point out 3 TERRIBLE THINGS in the script that made Brendan O’Carroll furious – He responded with 2 SH0CKING WORDS.

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Mrs Brown’s Boys is back tonight (Image: BBC Studios / Elaine Livingstone)

Since it first appeared on the BBC, some 14 years ago, Mrs Brown’s Boys has been a hugely divisive TV show. While audiences, at least at first, loved Brendan O’Carroll’s bawdy, seaside postcard humour, critics have slammed the show’s “old-fashioned blend of silly voices and slapstick”.

The love-it-or hate-it show has won Best Comedy at the viewer-voted National Television Awards a record six times, and Mrs Brown’s Boys creator Brendan O’Carroll has little time for his critics.

But O’Carroll himself has little time for the naysayers. He told podcaster Gerry Kelly: “The ones that love me, I love them, and the ones that don’t, f*** them.”

He added that if people don’t care for the show, they should simply “pick up the remote and change the station”.

Despite initially drawing in millions with its retro brand of humour, reaching a peak viewership of 11.52 million for its first Christmas Day special in 2013, Mrs Brown’s Boys is now in something of a decline.

Mrs Brown’s Boys’ Brendan O’Carroll stuns fans with comment about Tyler Perry's 'colour'

Some members of the cast and crew were shocked by rac1ally-charged language in the script (Image: BBC)

The show, which begins its fifth season tonight, last featured in the top 10 Christmas Day ratings in 2020, attracting 3.8 million viewers, but ratings have continued to slide. Production on the 2024 Christmas special was temporarily halted after a “rac1al term was implied” during rehearsals.

Brendan regrets the controversy, but explains that the rac1sm came from the character, and didn’t necessarily reflect his own views. “Comedy should off3nd somebody somewhere,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m not doing the job.”

He added that, if nothing else, the furore had brought the topic of rac1al prejudice back into public discourse

Mrs Brown's Boys

O’Carroll has recruited a cast of friends and family for his show (Image: BBC Studios / Elaine Livingstone)

“in the situation of Mrs. Brown, she doesn’t get a lot of stuff,” he said. “The idea of that thing was to poke fun at intergenerational rac1sm, how she didn’t get rac1sm.

“And she doesn’t, Mrs. Brown doesn’t get rac1sm. She doesn’t get g2y, even though her son is g2y, and she now acknowledges that he’s g2y and accepts it, but she doesn’t really know what g2y is. There’s no idea.”

O’Carroll is similarly defensive about the amount of swearing in the show’s scripts. Explaining how he was dragged into a meeting about the use of swear words, he said to BBC boss Danny Cohen in 2018: “You want me to stop saying ‘f***’ so you can put the show on at eight o’clock?’ And he said: ‘Exactly.’

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Mrs Brown’s Boys has its fans, but has been slammed by critics (Image: BBC Studios / Elaine Livingstone)

“I said: ‘The show is the show. Put it at eight o’clock, or put it on at half 10, put it on at half 12, the people who want to see it will find it. But the show is the show. I don’t care when you put it on, we are not changing the show’.”

He added that, as a writer, he will “keep pushing the envelope” and finding new ways to test and shape public opinion.

And if people don’t like it, he has two simple words for them.