All Round To Mrs Brown's fails to deliver

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All Round To Mrs Brown's fails to deliver

April 03, 2017 - 19:15
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There has been no stopping Brendan O’Carroll and his comic creation since Mrs Brown’s Boys first burst onto the BBC back in 2011. Last year, it was voted the nation’s favourite sitcom of the 21st century (which may be going a little too far, let’s be honest), has spawned a film and numerous national tours, despite its unoriginal material and repetitive writing.

All Round to Mrs Brown’s with Brendan O'Carroll and James Blunt

By Matthew Gormley @MatthewPGormley

There has been no stopping Brendan O’Carroll and his comic creation since Mrs Brown’s Boys first burst onto the BBC back in 2011. Last year, it was voted the nation’s favourite sitcom of the 21st century (which may be going a little too far, let’s be honest), has spawned a film and numerous national tours, despite its unoriginal material and repetitive writing.

The latest spin-off comes in the form of a Saturday night entertainment show, All Round To Mrs Brown’s. Once upon a time, BBC One was the only place to be on a Saturday night, with the likes of Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game and Noel’s House Party reigning supreme. Since losing the international karaoke juggernaut The Voice to ITV after five years, this year has seen Auntie going all out to try and reclaim her Saturday night crown, whilst protesting that she’s not at all bitter about losing will.i.am et al. This new vehicle for Mrs Brown is undoubtedly part of this ratings ploy. After seeing the first episode, it’s a test drive that’s not worth the petrol money.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I thought we’d be getting a typical shiny floor set piece, with Mrs Brown interviewing game-for-a-laugh celebrity guests who weren’t afraid to have the Michael well and truly extracted from every orifice, in a similar fashion to Dame Edna’s various parody chat shows.

Rather, it was an extended edition of Mrs Brown’s Boys with some celebrity cameos. All the usual cast, comprised almost entirely of Brendan’s family and friends, were involved, playing their usual characters, all as wooden as ever. They looked awkward and uncomfortable around the ‘star guests’ booked for the first show, namely Pamela Anderson, who was bemused throughout and was visibly questioning where on earth she was and what she was doing there. To be honest, I empathise with her thought process.

After trying to be a sitcom, opening with Mammy’s regular monologue to camera, it then tried to be a chat show, with Pamela being interviewed by Cathy Brown for her blog, ‘The Cathy Brown Show’, in what was quite possibly the most cringe-inducing few minutes of television I have ever witnessed. The premise was Cathy trying to be a professional ‘host’ whilst simultaneously dealing with interruptions from her foul-mouthed Irish matriarch of a mother. Cathy’s questions were meek and mild, while Mammy’s alternatives were bold and brash. It might have been mildly amusing if Brendan had allowed Mrs Brown to be her usual, no holds barred, say it how it is, self, rather than just sitting there trying to steal the limelight in an incredibly unimaginative ‘sketch’.

It also tried to be Saturday Night Takeaway, the superior Saturday night show, by picking on members of the audience to partake in well-rehearsed ‘surprise’ elements. Kudos to Ant and Dec for pulling off their regular audience pranks with such aplomb, as Mrs Brown demonstrates that it’s really not as easy as they make it look. The ‘surprise’ element, ‘Mammy of the Week’, an award for an unsuspecting member of the audience who had gone above and beyond the call of duty, failed to cut through. Surprise Surprise it was not.

Continuing to plough through its mish-mash format, it attempted a game show, as a member of the audience was plucked out to play with Mammy’s Box, a task which I’m sure was devised purely for the sake of the euphemism. The game itself involved the unsuspecting punter whacking £5 notes off the suit of resident dimwit Buster, who was dangling from the ceiling on a wire. Whoever said variety was dead had their theory confirmed during this item.

It even tried to be a cooking show, introducing a new character, Chef Aly. I’m not entirely sure whether the cooking segment was supposed to be a parody or was actually intended to be taken seriously. Like much of the format, it just couldn’t make its mind up what it was doing. Watching Mrs Brown hoist up her girdles to dance suggestively with Chef Ally to Shaggy’s ‘Mr Lover Lover’ raised a smile the first time, but didn’t warrant being repeated for a second or third.

As the painfully long hour drew to a close, the appearance of James Blunt brought some genuine humour to the proceedings, for the first time. Blunt is a superb musician with an incredibly dry sense of humour. He laps up his haters and refuses to take himself too seriously, as he demonstrated perfectly when he faceplanted a smacker onto a drooling Mrs Brown.

Not content with the phenomenal success of the three series of the sitcom and the, now traditional, Christmas specials being commissioned to run until 2020, it seems O’Carroll is willing to milk the cash cow dry. All Round To Mrs Brown’s was supposed to be a hilarious, fast-paced, variety, entertainment comedy chat show. It tried to be everything and failed to deliver on all accounts. The entertainment format was out of place on the familiar sitcom set, the audience participation segments fell flat and the ‘comedy’ was as far removed from funny as it could possibly have been.