Mrs Brown’s Boys is basically a joke in a Christmas cracker. Any other time of the year, you’d make a face. But here you are, in a scorching hot front room with a bunch of people who get on your nerves after a big feed. Finding something familiar to put a smile on everyone’s face is the only way to go. 

IT MAY not be a case of art imitating life, but The Beaver (15A), in which Mel Gibson portrays Walter Black, a man so ‘hopelessly depressed’ that he can only communicate with the world through a hand-puppet, opens at a time when Gibson is still suffering the fall-out from his very public meltdown last year.