Brendan O’Carroll vows to continue Mrs Brown’s Boys as critics malign New Year’s special

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Mrs Browns Boys creator Brendan O’Carroll has vowed to continue the divisive sequence as the present faces widespread criticism after its New Year’s Day special was aired on Monday.

In a brand new interview, O’Carroll mentioned that the crew behind the present plan to preserve making extra festive specials, including: “As long as the BBC keep asking, we’ll keep making episodes. It’s down to what the BBC want and what we can plan around.”

“We are definitely making more specials,” he added. “Whether we do another full series or not depends on dates.”

The feedback come as viewers sat down to watch the New Year’s Day special, which sees the Irish actor star as the loud-mouthed titular matriarch within the slapstick comedy sequence.

In the episode titled “New Year, New Mammy”, viewers watched Mrs Brown tackle a troublesome new well being and health regime as a mysterious customer to Finglas raised some troublesome questions for her shut associates, Agnes and Winnie.

Mrs Browns Boys was first aired by the BBC in 2011 after starting as a radio programme. The present was as soon as extraordinarily standard with viewers, however after 12 years of sequence and festive specials has extra lately been maligned by critics and viewers.

Many have branded the present, which additionally stars Jennifer Gibney, Paddy Houlihan, Eilish O’Carroll, Dermot O’Neill and Pat Shields, “unwatchable” and “excruciatingly terrible”, with some calling for the BBC to decommission the programme.

The present reached a peak viewers of 11m in 2012 and 2013, however its viewership has additionally declined within the decade following. In 2017, it was the most-watched present on TV on Christmas Day with 6.8m viewers.

On Christmas Day 2023, nonetheless, Mrs Browns Boys didn’t make it into the Top 10 leaderboard for Christmas Day rankings.

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Critics have lengthy derided the sequence. In his zero-star overview of the 2023 New Year’s Day special, The Independent’s TV critic Nick Hilton wrote: “Observing that Mrs Brown’s Boys is unfunny is rather like observing that the sea is wet.”

He continued: “And so, I’m giving the Mrs Brown’s Boys new year special – “New Year, New Mammy” – zero stars, for 2 causes. Firstly, as a result of it’s sufficiently unhealthy that it offends the notion of star awarding. But secondly, and extra importantly, as a result of it exists in a liminal house outdoors of vital scrutiny or modern cultural mores.”

In one other latest interview, O’Carroll mentioned he’d learnt not to take the criticism of the present “too seriously”.

“I’m well aware that comedy is very subjective,” he informed the BBC (through the Radio Times). “What some people like, other people just detest. So I don’t take it too serious.”

O’Carroll mentioned that what was much more vital to him was the response from households with autistic kids who mentioned that the present had helped them over time.

“When we started… by about the fourth or fifth episode, we got a couple of letters from people who had autistic children,” O’Carroll defined.

“It started as a couple of letters and it’s now been over 3,000. And they said that their kids watched Mrs Brown and they heard them laugh in context for the very first time. One woman said she was in the ­kitchen and heard her son laughing for the very first time.”

He added: “So when you get a ­letter like that, I don’t care what the critics say. That’ll do me.”