Mrs Brown’s Boys is back for another series (Picture: BBC/Alan Peebles)
Brendan O’Carroll used the new series of Mrs Brown’s Boys as a chance to ‘say goodbye’ to late, iconic entertainers.
The actor has revealed the upcoming four-parter will honour the likes of Barry Humphries, known for his stage character Dame Edna Everage, and Paul O’Grady, when it returns to BBC next month.
O’Carroll, 67, is set to reprise his role as mischievous matriarch Agnes Brown in the series, alongside Jennifer Gibney as Cathy Brown, Paddy Houlihan as Dermot Brown, Eilish O’Carroll as Winnie McGoogan, Dermot O’Neill as Grandad and Pat Shields as Mark Brown.
Despite being a regular feature on Christmas schedules for more than a decade, the new episodes will be the first mini-series run since 2013.
O’Carroll, who created and wrote the sitcom as well as starring in it, said it will pay tribute to veteran comedians Humphries and O’Grady.
He said: ‘I always try and put a little message, if I can, into every one of them (episodes).
Brendan O’Carroll wants to pay tribute to late comedians (Picture: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
‘In this whole series… I wanted to say goodbye to Dame Edna and to Paul. So it was hard to find that spot but I did find it, within the series, I did find it.
‘I don’t tell the BBC these things, I just do them.’
Australian entertainer Humphries, who died in April aged 89, entertained generations with satirical characters including Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson during his seven-decade career.
O’Grady, who died in March aged 67, rose to fame as persona Lily Savage before going on to host a string of TV programmes.
O’Carroll described the upcoming Mrs Brown’s Boys series as ‘easier’ to write than the regular two episodes at Christmas because he felt ‘more free’ to explore different storylines, including his character Agnes being depressed in the first episode titled Miserable Mammy.
‘The reason that I wrote this one is that I’d never done Agnes as depressed, and everybody gets depressed at some time,’ he said.
‘But I thought it’d be nice to see what she’s like, or what the family’s like when she’s depressed, and also to have the family ignore the fact that she was depressed.
The new series will also explore Agnes Brown’s mental health struggles (Picture: BBC Studios/Alan Peebles)
‘In other words, “Ah come on Mammy, get a grip on yourself”, and so there was that end of it.
‘There was also to make sure that I got the message across that Agnes is depressed, but she sought help, she did contact the doctor. That’s what you’ve got to do when you’re depressed.’
He added that it was important to portray how ‘difficult’ depression is because it’s not something you can ‘handle on your own.’
The writer still wanted to make it funny though, of course.
He also said filming in a TV studio with a live audience without Covid social distancing measures felt like a ‘rebirth’.
O’Carroll, who ‘loves a live audience’, admitted it feels like a ‘compliment’ that there were actually 96,000 requests for tickets, despite there only being 1,600 available via the BBC.
‘It’s just incredible that people want the experience of just being at a Mrs Brown (recording) and it is an experience because we don’t stop, even when we’re not on camera, we don’t stop.’
O’Grady died in March, aged 67 (Picture: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Humphries died in Apri, aged 89 (Picture: PA)
The cast of the upcoming series comprises many members of O’Carroll’s own family, while the character may be based on his own ‘extraordinary’ mother, despite years of denials.
Admittedly, he never wanted to confess to it, but as time passes, he’s realised that ‘Agnes is [his] mum.’
‘My mum had a great education. Agnes didn’t, but she has the wisdom. And she has that turn of phrase – mum would have a turn of phrase for everything, but Agnes has that turn of phrase that she doesn’t always get right – ‘Well, that’s the way it goes, the cows come home to roost’. But you know what she means, and she knows what she means.
‘I think the freedom of being Agnes comes from, I learned a lot from my mum.’
O’Carroll is the youngest of 11 children and his mother was 46 when she had him.
So, by the time he got to his ‘formative years’, most of the rest of the family had moved away or married, meaning he had the ‘uninterrupted attention of this genius of a woman.’
‘I soaked everything up from her.’
Mrs Brown’s Boys returns to BBC One at 9.30pm on Friday, September 8.
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O’Carroll wanted to pay tribute to comedy veterans.
