Mrs Brown’s Boys has been a hugely successful venture for Brendan O’Carroll and his extended family.
The show has claimed a number of awards including a Best Academy Television Award for Best Scripted Comedy in 2012 and it was even voted the best sitcom of the 21st Century in a Radio Times poll.
But it’s safe to say that it’s one of those shows that you either love or hate, and it seems pretty clear from the words of TV critic Euan Ferguson that he possesses an uncommonly strong distaste for the show.
Writing for the Observer‘s ‘The Week in TV‘, Ferguson went to town on the O’Carroll’s show by stating it was even worse than he could have expected and going as far as calling the episode “homophobic”.
It’s clear from the outset where he stands in relation to the show as he writes: “I decided not to lazily write off Mrs Brown’s Boys. It remains absurdly successful, despite critics having generally trashed Brendan O’Carroll’s creation as demeaning, cheap, grotesque, simplistic to the point of catalepsy, savagely lacking in wit.
“So I watched it, and was surprised. It’s all of these insults, yes, but the immersive experience is actually, shockingly, worse than expected. Sentimental to retching-point, homophobic, itch-lousy with single entendres, somehow managing to be both twee and vulgar, achingly unfunny, it made The Vicar of Dibley look like Father Ted.
“I suspect those of us in our high ivory metropolitan-elite towers (translation: humans who paid even nugatory attention to at least one class in school) missed a trick in 2016: the popularity of this shameless excrescence (I can now write it off after due diligence), which was voted by Radio Times readers the best sitcom of the 21st century, should have given a huge clue to the Brexit vote,” Ferguson finished.
Damn Euan, tell us how you really feel…
