Mrs Brown's Boys Takes People's Minds Off Problems Says Brendan O'Carroll

Brendan O'Carroll said that the feeling of nostalgia which Mrs Brown's Boys brings, allows people to forget about troubles which are dominating the world, and "have a laugh".

The show's creator made these comments as Mrs Brown returns for the Christmas Day and New Year's Day specials, which will see O'Carroll once again star as the much loved matriarch Agnes Brown, alongside his wife Jennifer Gibney who plays Cathy Brown, with Paddy Houlihan playing Dermot Brown, and Brendan's sister Eilish O'Caroll reprising her role as Winnie McGoogan.

"I think since 2008 the world hasn’t had a break," O’Carroll said of the sitcom. "We’ve had all sorts of challenges, we’ve had a pandemic, we have had wars, all sorts of worries and it just gets to the stage where people get unsure, they get nostalgic". 

O'Carroll continued, "They go 'Oh do you remember before, all this was lovely, that was lovely, the summers were longer and Christmas was brighter’". 

"Mrs Brown’s Boys has a kind of nostalgia to it. It looks back to that kind of late 80s and 90s comedy where you don’t have to worry about it, you just sit down and let it come at you. You don’t have to try and figure it out, you don’t have to have a university degree to understand it".

"It’s just gags and it’s ‘let’s sit down on Christmas Day, whatever else happens, let’s sit down and just have a laugh. I think that’s a big part of it, I think it’s nostalgia". 

"Christmas miracle"

Brendan O'Carroll also referred to an anecdote involving a chat he had with Love Actually creator Richard Curtis, when speaking about the difficulty of writing festive episodes year after year.

"It is difficult to come up with different stories, but again I always remember a story Richard Curtis was telling me about when they were making Love Actually", O'Carroll explained. 

"When they finished shooting it, he went ‘Oh, it’s a disaster’, we need to do some more shoots, and they decided to go back and shoot it as a Christmas movie and set it at Christmas and it changed the whole flavour of the movie and it became, and still is, my favourite Christmas movie". 

He added, "Christmas is not Christmas without Love Actually, and It’s A Wonderful Life, then it’s Christmas. So, no matter what the story is, if you add Christmas onto it, it just becomes more magical, I think". 

Mrs Brown's Christmas Special will air on December 25, with the New Year's special airing on January 1. Both specials will be shown on RTÉ and BBC television.