The joke is over – get Mrs Brown’s Boys off the BBC

I was chatting, a few months ago, with a comedy legend who had, in the past, written for Brendan O’Carroll’s sitcom, Mrs Brown’s Boys. I confessed, quite blithely, that I – like everyone I’ve ever met – consider the show, about an Irish mammy and her unruly brood, to be unqualified garbage. To my astonishment, he looked surprised. “Really?” he said. And I felt, momentarily, unmoored. Was I being needlessly spiteful? Does Mrs Brown’s Boys deserve more credit than I give it? Is it actually – dare I say it? – good?

The pressure is on this year. O’Carroll was widely reported to have made a racist joke, by “implying the n-word”, during rehearsals for the Christmas special. He called it a “clumsy attempt at a joke”, others have called it a “racial slur”. Six of one, I suppose, in Mrs Brown’s world. Production was briefly halted, but the BBC, for some reason, decided to let O’Carroll off with a slap on the wrist and no interruption to his Christmas and new year specials. Indeed, the latter features a Japanese businessman – Mr Yoshimoto (Eiji Mihara) – who shouts his name (“Yoshimoto!”), his hometown (“Tokyo!”) and then bows repeatedly like a drinking bird desk toy. “How do you turn this fella off?” cheeky rogue Buster (Danny O’Carroll) says, with a smile.

But though the seasons change and the years pass, Mrs Brown’s Boys remains the same: tedious, unfunny, small-minded. Even a hold-up of the entire clan – perpetrated by a vicious criminal on the loose – can’t inject any tension into proceedings.

If lessons have been learnt from the racism controversy, it’s not immediately clear what they are. It’s easy to laugh Mrs Brown’s Boys off as an old-school studio sitcom designed to peeve liberal metropolitan elites. It’s certainly easier to do that than it is to laugh in any other way. But we are living through a challenging moment for television. Shows are being cancelled in their pomp, and the pathways for young, diverse voices are facing increasing roadblocks. Getting from script to screen has never been harder, and yet… Mrs Brown’s Boys turns up again, in primetime slots on Christmas and New Year’s Day, like a planet-eating black hole in the TV schedule.

Not all television has to be good. After all, I like The Big Bang Theory even though everyone seems to consider it dross. One man’s dream is another’s nightmare. There are doubtless people who will find racial stereotypes hilarious, while others will need stitches at the prospect of teenage Bono (Jamie O’Carroll) dating an adult woman (“Don’t be silly,” Grandad (Dermot O’Neill) tells him, “put a condom on your willy!”). No, it’s not simply that Mrs Brown’s Boys attracts antipathy, like dust gravitating towards my mantelpiece. It’s that the O’Carrolls have had so many bites at the cherry, so many chances to improve or develop their offering, to evolve as the times around them have evolved. And they haven’t. Instead, they warm up for their festive run of episodes by alluding to racial slurs, a move that is then excused – endorsed even – on BBC One at 11.05pm on Christmas Day and then 10.30pm on New Year’s Day.

For me, the joke is over. The BBC should provide opportunities for new writers and actors to create terrible sitcoms for yuletide cheer. If the British public want to thumb their nose at the critical establishment – and why not? – then there would be plenty of obliging comedians, lining up to create something juvenile and lowest common denominator and crowd-pleasing. “It’s a new year,” Agnes warns viewers. “Plenty to look forward to.” But is there? The mind-numbing tyranny of the O’Carrolls seems doomed to persevere, because, as we head into 2025, if you can get away with racist gags delivered live on BBC premises, you can get away with anything.