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Mrs Brown's Boys is the BBC's crown jewel – not that they will ever admit it

Eilish and Brendan O'Carroll in Mrs Brown's Boys - BBC
Eilish and Brendan O'Carroll in Mrs Brown's Boys - BBC

Mrs Brown has been turned upside down with news that two cast members of the BBC's hugely divisive comedy juggernaut have quit in a dispute over pay.

The departure of Gary Hollywood and Damien McKiernan, who played boyfriends Dino and Gino, comes at the worst possible time as production ramps up for the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special. The BBC’s biggest sitcom must take on its greatest challenge – making us laugh in the middle of a pandemic –  minus a brace of its stars.

Normally reports of behind the scenes drama at a ratings-winning series would provoke crisis talks for the BBC and its new director Tim Davie. After all, in the era of the New Normal, when sporting events play out in empty stadiums and drama must run the gauntlet of social distancing, Brendan O’Carroll’s chuckle extravaganza is the nearest the BBC has to a sure thing.

Its success cannot be measured simply in terms of garnering eyeballs. Amid ongoing accusations that the BBC is obsessed with wooing a Metropolitan viewership at the expense of the rest of the country, Mrs Brown’s Boys is an unlikely phenomenon. Here is a smash hit that baffles hip Londoners yet is adored elsewhere. It’s a holy grail, of sorts.

And now it’s in crisis. Why hasn't the Corporation moved to light entertainment Defcon 5 – as it surely would in the event of, say, Freddy Flintoff quitting Top Gear or Doctor Who requiring a new assistant?

The obvious answer is that it simply doesn’t understand Mrs Brown’s Boys and has had little to do with its breakthrough, beyond giving O’Carroll the keys to prime time (and hinting he should shut the door on the way out). Every time it airs, you can practically see the nabobs holding their noses, closing their eyes and thinking of the ratings.

They're hardly alone. Not even its biggest fans would pretend Mrs Brown’s Boys is comedy gold. The low-brow humour makes Father Ted look like Dostoevsky. Single-entendres, swear words and flubbed dialogue are its stock-in-trade (in every episode at least one cast member forgets a line).

In other words, it’s no Fleabag (a series beaten to the Best Comedy at the National Television Awards by Mrs Brown's Boys). But television would be exhausting if it consisted of nothing but Fleabag. Mrs Brown’s Boys knows what it is and is relaxed in its skin, and there is something hugely charming about that.

Brendan O'Carroll at the National Television Awards - Wireimage
Brendan O'Carroll at the National Television Awards - Wireimage

Or, at least, there used to be. One of the series’s winning attributes is its sense of family. “It must be one of the few programmes on which, every week, the first 10 minutes of rehearsal is given over to hugging. The entire cast comes on and hugs the entire crew,” director Ben Kellett said in 2013.

However, that sense of Mrs Brown’s Boys as cuddly on and off screen has been eroded by the latest controversy and reports of a divide between O’Carroll and his immediate relatives and the outsiders in the cast.

O’Carroll has packed the crew with friends and relatives. His wife Jennifer Gibney portrays Agnes Brown’s daughter Cathy. O’Carroll’s sister, Eilish, plays Mrs Brown’s best friend, Winnie McGoogan. The ensemble also includes O’Carroll’s children Danny and Fiona, his son-in-law Martin Delany, daughter-in-law Amanda Woods and grandson Jamie. The part of Grandad, meanwhile, is filled by Dermot O’Neill, a comedy collaborator of O’Carroll’s since the Eighties.

The complaint that has come to light is that those beyond that inner circle are very much on the lower-rung – which may explain the exit of Hollywood and McKiernan. “The show is very Upstairs/Downstairs, with a very clear divide between Brendan’s family and the few actual actors such as Gary and Damien,” a source close to the production has said. “The family are all directors of the Mrs Brown’s production company and are always looked after.”

Mrs Brown's Boys - BBC
Mrs Brown's Boys - BBC

It is a reminder that Mrs Brown’s Boys isn’t simply a jolly familial jape. This is a business – an incredibly lucrative one, at that. O’Carroll and Gibney each earned £2 million in dividends from their entertainment company in 2018 and 2019 according to accounts filed last year. Some of those profits have been lavished on a family compound in Florida, with an estimated worth of £3.4 million.  And, as the recent drama proves, where there is money there is conflict.

Of course in many ways it's a miracle Mrs Brown made it to BBC One at all. O’Carroll, who had already been rejected by broadcasters in Ireland as naff and uncouth, was earning a decent living bringing his comedy to the people via an uproarious live show.

In 2009, he was approached by BBC Scotland producer Stephen McCrum, who suggested transferring the stage production to the screen. So this was a success story that unfolded hundreds of miles from the BBC’s London heartland. No wonder it seems so alien

The show has continued to smash ratings records (the 2012 Christmas special notched up 11 million viewers and though that figure slid to just 4.6 million last year it remains one of the BBC’s Christmas crown jewels). Yet it was blanked by Davie when laying out his ambitions for the corporation in September. In an address to rank-and-file he outlined his vision of a BBC that appealed “From Cornwall to Shetland, from Suffolk to County Fermanagh.”

The 2016 Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas Special - BBC
The 2016 Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas Special - BBC

He spoke as if this were a lofty aspiration – an impossible goal to be pursued idealistically rather than something readily attainable. He mentioned Normal People and Fleabag, but not Mrs Brown’s Boys, the series that has appealed to the very demographics evoked in his misty-eyed speech.

When advertising its Christmas schedule, it’s a safe bet that the Mrs Brown’s Boys two-part seasonal special  – to air on December 25 and January 1 – will receive prime billing. But why wait till Christmas to wheel out your most popular comedy, especially when - as Davie has indicated - there's a drive to reduce the amount of “left wing” comedy on the BBC?

The acceptable alternative, Davie would surely agree, is Mrs Brown – a chortle-fest so apolitical you could binge an entire season without once encountering the word “Brexit”. If you’re fed up with withdrawal agreements, Donald Trump’s opinions on facemasks and Coronavirus itself, it has the potential to be the ultimate refuge.

How did Mrs Brown's Boys become the BBC's crown jewel? Share your own thoughts in the comments section below.