Mrs. Brown’s Boys – Series 3
Created by Brendan O’Carroll.
Starring Brendan O’Carroll, Jennifer Gibney, Paddy Houlihan, Fiona O’Carroll and Danny O’Carroll.
SYNOPSIS:
The third series of the Dublin-set sitcom depicting the life and times of Mrs Agnes Brown and her unruly brood.
This reviewer’s knives are out for Mrs Brown’s Boys series three before the disc even hits the player, upon catching sight of the mock-quote from the eponymous Mrs Agnes Brown on the DVD box cover – ‘We can’t believe how popular this show has been. There must be feck-all on the telly!’ Of course, every self respecting media-literate comedy fan ‘knows’ that Mrs Brown’s Boys is the real life incarnation of When The Whistle Blows, the spoof lowest common denominator sitcom within a sitcom from Extras. Six episodes later, the initial certainty that that ironic tagline would be used as a stick with which to gleefully beat the show has been replaced with a pleasant sense of surprise that, although not for everybody, there is plenty to be enjoyed here.
Writer and star Brendan O’Carroll has hit on a winning formula with this show, combining familiar premises and comic tropes with just enough humour and inventiveness to recommend Mrs Brown’s Boys series 3 as being worth at least a cursory glance to all but the most hardened of comic elitists. O’Carroll stars as Mrs Brown, surrounded by a supporting cast comprising mainly of real life friends and family. The plots are never more than sitcom cliches on which to hang the gags, but the show does succeed in creating a warm and jovial atmosphere that elevates it above some of the low grade efforts to which it is unfairly compared. It’s often the case that some of the funniest content on a comedy DVD is in the outtakes and corpsing bloopers and the show has made it a badge of honour to include many of these within the broadcasts; the cast clearly revel in an enthusiasm for the ridiculousness of the plots, situations and gags that is highly infectious and draws many of the biggest laughs.
The relentless bad language may offend some, and indeed like one of its spiritual predecessors, Gimme Gimme Gimme, much of the appeal of Mrs Brown’s Boys appears to be in presenting something just naughty enough to allow a certain cross section of the middle class to feel shocked without being offended. A sizeable proportion of the intended audience may also consider the consistent breaking of the fourth wall far more innovate than it really is, but ultimately it’s all part of creating a show that wants to do nothing more than give people an escapist half hour of easy, good natured laughs.
There will always be viewers who refuse to take even a brief glance at a show that looks like a poster child for everything that is wrong with comedy in 2013; those able to suspend disbelief enough to give Mrs Brown’s Boys a shot will be treated to an interestingly anarchic show that contains more than enough to deserve recommendation. O’Carroll and crew deliver surprisingly consistent laughs and in an era when too many comedies trip themselves up trying to prove how clever and self aware they can be, Mrs Brown’s Boys deserves praise for being proud to be nothing more than simple fun and delivering enough genuine wit and spirit to pull off the job amicably.
Ryan O’Neill
Originally published March 22, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
