Brendan O'Carroll

Billy Connolly to appear on Who Do You Think You Are?

Billy Connollly, Brendan O'Carroll, Julie Walters and Brain Blessed are amongst those who will appear on the next series of family tree show Who Do You Think You Are?

Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie - 'flatly indifferent cash-in'

Brendan O'Carroll's Mrs Brown's Boys has reached the big screen spin-off, and may well become as successful as The Inbetweeners Movie - but on this evidence, it doesn't deserve to.

"Crass, backwards-looking and unfunny," goes the critical consensus on Brendan O'Carroll's feck-flecked sitcom. But what if the critics are on the wrong side of history on this one, like they were with Zeppelin, or the Opal Fruits to Starburst name change? What if Mrs Brown's Boys is actually the platonic ideal of what comedy can and should be? Consider the evidence: here's a show that recognises that a man being assaulted with a rectal thermometer is funnier than any long-winded witticism could ever be; here's a show that offers up a truly progressive family at its centre: a matriarch in drag whose eldest son is out and proud and whose youngest is a model example of the rehabilitative qualities of prison (he's married and has found gainful employment dressing up as a penguin); here's a show that started out on stage and moved to screen, and as such is, arguably, the closest thing our generation has to Play For Today; here's a show that exhibits a flair for fourth-wall-breaking self-awareness - fluffed lines left in the final edit, Mrs Brown directly acknowledging a camera that has strayed into shot - that meta wannabe Arrested Development would kill for; most tellingly, here's a show that regularly attracts 9m viewers at a time when TV audiences are dwindling. Have 9m people ever been wrong? I mean, that's probably the same amount of people that voted for Ukip.

Graham Linehan: The Walshes is no Mrs Brown's Boys

The Father Ted creator is hoping his new sitcom The Walshes will not be compared with Brendan O'Carroll's hit - and says he was "never really a big fan" of O'Carroll's work.

Brendan O'Carrol: I want to write another series

Mrs Brown's Boys will "definitely" return for another series, star and creator Brendan O'Carroll has said.

Mrs Brown's Boys wins best Comedy at NTAs 2014

Brendan O'Carroll's BBC One sitcom beat Ricky Gervais's Derek, Miranda Hart's BBC One comedy and US import The Big Bang Theory.

Mrs Brown's Boys creator: Screw the critics!

Brendan O'Carroll says he doesn't care about negative reviews as Mrs Brown's Boys wins its second NTA in a row.

No new episodes of Mrs Brown's Boys for at least a year

Fans of hit comedy Mrs Brown's Boys will have to wait a whole year for a new series because the show is too popular. Gary Hollywood, who stars in the show, said creator Brendan O'Carroll is too busy to write new material.