Dara \u00d3 Briain on bringing his emotionally resonant new stand-up show to Derry<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Dara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/D7QMI5MOYRAHNGKCT3N5EPAAKA.jpg\")
Dara O’Briain (TLC) <\/p>\n
Alongside \u00d3 Briain, rotating guests will include Mock the Week veterans Hugh Dennis, Russell Howard and Ed Byrne, as well as Katherine Ryan, Lou Sanders, Rhys James and Sara Pascoe.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the show, \u00d3 Briain (53), says the reaction was interesting, as he felt people were angry while it was on air, but then sad when it was cancelled.<\/p>\n
\u201cMock the Week was a strange show, partly because it was on the BBC, and partly because the Conservatives were in government for the entire last 14 years of it,\u201d explains London-based \u00d3 Briain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were on air during a period when people became very angry about things, and they were very angry at us all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, the most vocal people are usually the angriest ones, so that\u2019s all we ever heard. Right up until the show was cancelled, it felt like constant criticism:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018How dare you say this?\u2019, \u2018How dare you say that?\u2019, \u2018You\u2019re too controversial\u2019, \u2018You\u2019re too left-wing\u2019, \u2018You\u2019re too right-wing\u2019. Whatever it was, we always seemed to be stuck in the middle of that storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the show got cancelled, and suddenly loads of people said, \u2018Oh, I really liked that show\u2019. And you think, oh, OK, because all we\u2019d ever heard before was anger.\u201d<\/p>\n
He adds, laughing: \u201cAfter that, people became more reflective and realised, actually, it was just a silly show, and they\u2019d enjoyed it. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s nice to be back. We\u2019re returning off the back of that goodwill, three years ago we ended on this lovely wave of people being very happy about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re back again, and all we can really do is screw that up. All we can do is ruin people\u2019s happy memories and end up right back where we started, with everyone being angry again. So that\u2019s something to look forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now we\u2019re back again, all we can really do is screw that up. All we can do is ruin people\u2019s happy memories <\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Dara \u00d3 Briain![\"Dara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/YIBWW67GAJGCHOBLEOOHL62MA4.jpg\")
Dara O’Briain (TLC) <\/p>\n
\u00d3 Briain says this series will be tackling the Labour government and Donald Trump\u2019s United States presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s interesting that we\u2019re coming back to this moment now. We didn\u2019t exactly leave a calm world behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe left with Trump, and now we\u2019re essentially returning to him again. We left with the inauguration riots, and now here we are back in it, like \u2018Oh, here we go again\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest change for us is that it\u2019s no longer a Conservative government. Now, it\u2019ll be about Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00d3 Briain says the new format allows for more talking and breathing room, and with the move away from the BBC, the panel will no longer need to maintain minute-by-minute partisan balance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new government changes things,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the people who used to give out to us for being one thing or another, that automatically flips.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I know some people go, \u2018Oh, well, it\u2019s clear because you\u2019re not on the BBC anymore\u2019. No, mate, it\u2019s different. It\u2019s different people complaining about different things.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also don\u2019t think that, because we\u2019re on a commercial channel rather than the BBC, people will feel the need to literally hold a stopwatch and time how long we spend talking about one party versus another, which they genuinely used to do as if we were Question Time or something.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople would say, \u2018Well, you talked about Labour for this many minutes and the Conservatives for this many minutes, why are you so horrible to\u2026?\u2019 And you\u2019re like, you\u2019ve all got to relax.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember once getting tweets from two different people at the same time \u2013 one saying, \u2018I can\u2019t believe you\u2019re so right-wing\u2019, and the other saying, \u2018I can\u2019t believe you\u2019re so left-wing\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cI sent them to each other and said, \u2018You\u2019re both saying this at the same time\u2019. And to be fair, they went, \u2018Yeah, OK, fair point\u2019. But we really did get grief from every direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get to the same level of that now. There\u2019s no sense of public ownership anymore, and while scrutiny would be lovely and people actually watching the show, I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get the same level of purely partisan reaction. I\u2019m not saying I\u2019ll miss it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mock the Week has historically served as a springboard for up-and-coming comedians, which \u00d3 Briain describes as a \u201cfinishing school\u201d for fresh talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always loved that role, being a kind of finishing school or like a debutante ball, I suppose,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d have people who\u2019d done Edinburgh and done really, really well, and we\u2019d basically say, we now present to you this season\u2019s new faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019d come onto the show and, at first, there was often that moment where they were finding their feet. You could see the nerves, that sense of, oh my God, who am I here? Where do I fit on this show? But by the second series they were in, they were up and running.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always really nice to be that show. If you look back, you can see people sweeping through it, passing through on their way to other things. Romesh Ranganathan, Sara Pascoe and James Acaster passed through, different generations coming through, then moving on.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we\u2019d just wave them on, like proud teachers. They\u2019d come to us, graduate, we\u2019d shed a single tear, and then welcome in the next influx, like something out of a boarding school novel or Malory Towers.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s what\u2019s exciting now. The headline names are always the people you already know, of course. But the ones who\u2019ll really grab your attention are the new ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mock the Week returns on Sunday on TLC (Freeview channel 12, Freesat channel 144, Virgin Media channel 113)<\/p>\n
![\"Dara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7LX5ZOJ6RRF7VPFSNB7NRXBNGU.jpg\")
Dara O’Briain is back with a new series of Mock the Week (TLC) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the satirical panel show Mock the Week was cancelled by the BBC in 2022, host Dara \u00d3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1049,132894,93,61,60,132895,1650,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-271517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-comedy","9":"tag-dara-o-briain","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-mock-the-week","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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