Mrs Brown's Boys, New Year special, review If the more cerebral delights of The Thirteenth Tale on BBC Two weren't quite your festive tipple then the Mrs Brown's Boys New Year's Special, the second MBB special in a week, offered television from the opposite end of the spectrum on Monday night. Even if you don't find it funny, an episode or two of Brendan O'Carroll's ribald sitcom offers a useful cultural dipstick - the first MBB special scored an astonishing 9.4m viewers on Christmas Day, topping the ratings. This is the most popular programme in Britain at the moment. The New Year's special had the foul-mouthed supergran Agnes Brown (O'Carroll) organising her New Year's Eve party. One by one most of her extended family dropped out, but as always, the plot was merely the means to bring one character after another in to "Mammy's" kitchen for a few "fecks," a wink to camera and a one-liner. The big laughs last night came from a parrot and an extended fart gag, both comic staples but both as predictable as a headache on New Year's Day. Yet it is easy to be snooty about Mrs Brown's Boys - much harder to divine why this is the comedy that, in sheer popularity, knocks all of the more lauded shows from your Walliamses or your Mirandas into a cocked hat. Essentially, I suspect, it's because the show knows its fans and involves them directly. Last night's episode began by zooming in to the set to reveal that there is a live audience watching the recording, all laughing their heads off as O'Carroll and co corpse, ad lib and play to the crowd. That this is a television show feels almost incidental. At the close the cameras pulled back to show the audience once again, all in their party hats, singing along to Auld Lang Syne. Everyone was invited to Mrs Brown's party, and the ones who'd come were having a blast.