BROWN AND OUT

As ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ arrives for series five, Phil Harrison tries really hard to like it. He manages to find a certain ‘zen beauty’ to the show’s jokes but he’s calling for a mercy killing

- Phil Harrison

What is there left to say about Mrs Brown’s Boys? Brendan O’Carroll’s rickety trad-com continues to loom over the TV landscape, until recently seeming as indestructible as a cockroach and as inevitable as a tax return.

On the face of it, last year's racism scandal - in which “a racial term was implied” during a rehearsal for a Christmas special - has made little or no difference to the show's continuing viability. Certainly not enough of a dent to prevent a fifth season arriving on BBC One. But why? In the light of its mystifying longevity, is it time for a reappraisal? Is it time for snooty critics to have another look at the show and maybe another look at themselves into the bargain? Well, no. Season five of Mrs Brown's Boys is business as usual, and that business isn't funny.

In fact, the opening episode acts as a neat, almost defiant restatement of the show's impoverished comic modus operandi. Cathy (Jennifer Gibney) is trying to launch a podcast about “interesting women”. Inevitably, O'Carroll's Agnes blunders into recording range and ruins everything. This was always going to happen. But as ever, it's the little details that reveal the whole picture.