The BBC has confirmed that season five of Mrs Brown’s Boys will soon be released – and not everybody is happy about it.
Over the years, the Irish sitcom has variously been called “old-fashioned”, “lazy” and “vulgar”, so it was always inevitable that its return would provoke a strong reaction.
The cast, led by actor and comedian Brendan O’Carroll as the eponymous Mrs Brown, alongside his real-life family members, will be back on TV next month, with the first episode slated to air on BBC One on Friday 1 August at 9.30pm.
All four episodes of the new series will also drop on BBC iplayer at the same time, so viewers can binge the entire series if they fancy.
It’s the first new regular season since 2023, though the show has aired a Christmas special every year since 2011.
Although Mrs Brown’s Boys won a National Television Award for Comedy in 2024, its audience numbers have steadily been dwindling over the past decade.
The 2024 Christmas Day special saw plummeting ratings, with only 2.2 million people tuning in, compared to the Gavin and Stacey Finale attracting 12.3 million viewers, while Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl garnered 9.5 million.
The Independent’s Nick Hilton called last year’s special “tedious, unfunny, small-minded” in a scathing one-star review.
Back in 2013, the show pulled in 11.52 million nationwide viewers for its Christmas special, but the last time it featured in the top 10 rated shows on Christmas Day was in 2020, when it attracted 3.8 million viewers.
It has proved controversial, attracting ire from critics and viewers alike. In October 2024, it was reported that filming for the show’s 2024 festive special was paused after O’Carroll made a “clumsy” joke where a “racial term was implied” during rehearsals. The actor later apologised for causing offence.
Some Mrs Brown’s Boys denigrators have shared their less-than-enthused response to the news of a fifth season on social media.
“God. Aren’t we suffering enough,” wrote one commenter on Twitter/X post under a post announcing the news. “Literally no one asked for this,” tweeted another. “The BBC becoming even more irrelevant and out of touch.”
Meanwhile, a third detractor quipped: “Warning: If you receive a tweet with a link to a clip from Mrs Brown’s Boys new series, DO NOT OPEN. It’s a link to a clip from Mrs Brown’s Boys new series.”
