Mrs Brown’s Boys to film new series in spring despite low ratings and racism row
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Viewing figures for long-running series plummeted on Christmas Day. Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O’Carroll has confirmed another season of the long-running BBC series despite recent calls for the show to be axed following a racism row. In October, it was reported that filming for the show’s 2024 festive special was halted after O’Carroll made a “clumsy” joke where a “racial term was implied” during rehearsals. The actor apologised after the joke “backfired and caused offence”.
![[The ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ Christmas special]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/25/09/500683.jpg)
The show has had a controversial place on festive TV schedules for many years, and the 2024 Christmas Day special saw plummeting ratings, with only 2.2 million people tuning in. When the show first aired in 2013, it pulled in 11.52 million nationwide viewers. However, that was its peak, and ratings started to slowly drop. The last time it featured in the top 10 rated shows on Christmas Day was in 2020, when it attracted 3.8 million viewers.
![[O’Carroll as Agnes Brown]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/23/17/500687.jpg)
By comparison, other Christmas Day specials received impressive ratings, with the Gavin and Stacey Finale attracting 12.3 million viewers, while Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl attracted 9.5 million. O’Carroll, who plays Mrs Brown’s Boys’ lead, the foul-mouthed matriarch Agnes Brown, has confirmed that the sitcom will soon be filming a new series despite the negative feedback.
The actor told the Daily Star: “We are going to film another series in April and May [2025]. It’s lovely to be asked to do another one.”. The news comes after the show’s Christmas Special was critically panned across the board. In The Independent’s one-star review of the programme, Sean O’Grady concluded that it was a “crime against comedy”.
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