Mrs Brown’s Boys is somehow back for another season, but its viewership has dropped off a cliff amid growing calls to axe the show.
The BBC comedy returned on Friday night after a two-year break and a widely-panned Christmas special to a viewership of 1,500,000 fans.
This is a whopping 8.5million down from Mrs Brown’s Boys’ heyday and a far cry from its once lofty title of ‘best British sitcom’ less than a decade ago.
While overnight ratings are criticised for not showing the full picture in the age of streaming, they do highlight just how far the once-popular comedy has fallen.
Launching in 2011, the series follows the life of the interfering Agnes Brown (played by writer and creator Brendan O’Carroll) and her family.
It’s proven one of the most divisive shows of all time, with this series cementing viewers’ opinions that the ‘axe looms’.
SuperTV shared on X that the show ‘returned last night with just 1.5 million viewers, the lowest audience it has ever recorded.’
The ratings elicited the expected reactions from those who are less than enthusiastic about revisiting Mammy’s world.
‘Mrs Brown come collect ya tings from BBC Studios then,’ joked floellaumbagabe as iJordan said: ‘Nature is healing’.
‘8.5 million people have clearly had a word with themselves,’ wrote johnoconnell6, while pheebs_18 asked: ‘Time for this show to finally end? 😭’
SamFarmer2 added: ‘Because people are fed up with it and fed up with the recycled jokes.’
SkylarSkye14 declared it the ‘worst show of all time’ as they watched on Friday night, amid others begging to ‘make it stop’.
‘1.5 million lunatics still chose to put themselves through it tho. Madness,’ mikepriestley13 pointed out.
Defending Mrs Brown’s Boys, ScottTHFC23 wrote: ‘Still a very good number without including catch-up and iplayer people.’
It’s true that viewing habits have changed, with fewer people watching TV as it airs and more opting for the flexibility of on-demand viewing.
At the peak of Mrs Brown’s Boys’ popularity — their third season in 2012 — it brought in over 9million viewers every episode.
That year saw 10.72million people tune in for the Christmas Eve episode, with a whopping 11.69million returning the next day for the second part.
After four years, this festive figure had dropped slightly to 8.98million but remained steady with the show voted as the best British sitcom of the 21st century.
In response to this, O’Carroll said: ‘It vindicates the fans’ belief in the show. They have kept us on the air – it certainly wasn’t the reviewers.
“There is an audience out there that comedy forgot – that Are You Being Served? audience has been left behind. Us winning this award proves that.’
Mrs Brown’s Boys has never received good reviews, but the show is struggling to compete a decade on, despite once being voted as better than The Office or Gavin and Stacey.
Last year’s Christmas episode pulled in a measly 2.2million viewers, while Gavin and Stacey’s return yielded 10million more viewers.
Behind the scenes, there has been controversy too, as rehearsals for the festive episode were halted temporarily after O’Carroll ‘implied’ a racial slur.
After the BBC investigated the incident, he apologised for his ‘clumsy attempt at a joke’, which he said had ‘backfired and caused offence’.
He was accused of starting to utter the N-word before he was stopped by a co-star.
Metro once wrote that the BBC should ‘hang its head in shame’ for broadcasting Mrs Brown’s Boys. Could this season finally be the nail in the coffin?
Mrs Brown’s Boys is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer and airs Fridays at 9.30pm on BBC One.
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