{"id":383907,"date":"2026-04-06T00:17:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T00:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/383907\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T00:17:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T00:17:25","slug":"lowbrow-gags-sitting-neatly-between-benny-hill-and-mrs-browns-boys-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/383907\/","title":{"rendered":"Lowbrow gags sitting neatly between Benny Hill and Mrs Brown\u2019s Boys \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing worse than trying to make yourself enjoy something when your heart isn\u2019t in it and deep down you know it isn\u2019t all that great. That is the issue confronting Cork<\/a> people in every part of the universe as Leeside-set BBC<\/a>\/RT\u00c9<\/a> co-production The Young Offenders (BBC One, 9.30pm) returns with more of the same lowbrow humour and fossilised gags, located somewhere between prime Benny Hill and offpeak Mrs Brown\u2019s Boys. <\/p>\n

The latest season reunites ragamuffins Conor (Alex Murphy<\/a>) and Jock (Chris Walley<\/a>) after Jock\u2019s three-year incarceration in a Colombian prison for drug smuggling. Having returned to Cork, Jock seeks out his best pal, only for a series of unfortunate events to result in their being stranded in rural Cork wearing full-length dresses.<\/p>\n

If the idea of men in dresses \u2013 that\u2019s it, that\u2019s the punchline \u2013 sends your funny bone into overdrive, The Young Offenders is the show for you. But for anyone who prefers their comedy to operate above the level of nudge-in-the-ribs guffaw it\u2019s hard to find much joy in humour so fnar, fnar that it makes a Carry On movie look like Curb Your Enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

Their adventures go further off track as the duo accidentally kidnap an elderly couple who find that a brush with criminality is just the thing to revive their ailing love life. Jock and Conor, meanwhile, make it back to Cork city, where the second of two episodes finds them taking on apprentices and showing them the ropes of petty thievery and generally causing heartache to Conor\u2019s mother, Mair\u00e9ad (Hilary Rose<\/a>, wife of series creator Peter Foott<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As something to half-watch as you scroll through your phone, it\u2019s fine. One big plus is its wholesome depiction of male friendship \u2013 something that television generally regards as inherently toxic and not a good idea. Also, Cork looks great \u2013 and will be even better once all those new skyscrapers go up (hurrah for that rare Irish city trying to make it out of the 19th century and into the 20th). <\/p>\n

The cast is outstanding too \u2013 Murphy and Walley have chemistry and their northside accents are authentic without slipping into caricature (impressive, as the two actors are thoroughly middle class, with Walley having attended local blue-blood academy Christian Brothers College). It\u2019s just that the humour is so one-note that you can see the gags coming from miles away.<\/p>\n

The Young Offenders<\/a> is an important reminder to RT\u00c9 (which co-produces the series along with the BBC) that urban life exists outside Dublin. But it\u2019s not much more than that, and what a tragedy it is that it doesn\u2019t aspire to more than old-school British sitcom in a Cork jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s nothing worse than trying to make yourself enjoy something when your heart isn\u2019t in it and deep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[129773,1578,129769,46,93,171057,61,60,6085,166863,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-383907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-alex-murphy","9":"tag-bbc","10":"tag-chris-walley","11":"tag-cork","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-hilary-rose","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-rte","17":"tag-the-young-offenders","18":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383907","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=383907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}