Mrs Brown, the foul-mouthed matriarch is back in town. The title character of the comedy phenomenon is currently in the place known only in the TV series as “the market” - filming the first of what is hoped to be a franchise of Mrs Brown films.
Mrs Brown’s creator and alter-ego, Brendan O’Carroll, compared filming in Moore Street to performing in a stadium.
Every vantage point was taken as passersby crowded around the cast and crew of Mrs Brown the Movie as it was filmed on an uncommonly hot September day.
The €5 million film is the first in a "four-part trilogy", according to Carroll lapsing into character - and if the franchise gains a fraction of the audience of the TV series globally, it will bring further success to arguably the most popular television franchise ever to have come out of Ireland.
This time around, Agnes Brown finds herself facing down a crooked Eastern European developer who wants to take her stall and build a set of apartments.
At the same time she is landed with a tax bill of €4 million, a legacy of an unpaid tax bill stretching back to her grandmother’s time.
The Mrs Brown bandwagon is already well established in Ireland and the UK. Carroll found himself swamped by well-wishers and fans of the series in breaks between filming.
Mrs Brown is also making inroads further afield. It recently started showing in Canada, while all 220,000 tickets to the stage show sold out in Australia. It's also the No 1 comedy show on Romanian television, where Carroll insisted Mrs Brown's son Rory, a gay character played by actor Rory Cowan, be kept in the show despite reservations from the television companies there.
The TV critics who periodically slam the show have long given up offering an explanation for its success, but Carroll believes it’s an antidote to the recessionary times we live in.
“People are really, really down and this is a comedy that’s not trying to be clever. It is just trying to make you laugh,” he explained.
“There is not enough programmes on television where you can sit down for a half an hour and laugh. We’re not trying to give a message.”
The film will retain the same scatological humour of the TV series, judging by the scene shot many times over in Moore Street earlier today.
Threatened by three heavies wearing suits and sunglasses at her stall, including one played by former Irish hooker Shane Byrne, she tells her tormentors: "You'll need more than the Blues Brothers, you f***ing muppets."
Byrne confessed his first acting part as a Russian heavy named Vladimir was "hardly a taxing role. I just have to stand around being mean and moody" but he was delighted to be involved. "Maybe I'll set off a trend for mullets in Russia. "
The film will shoot for seven weeks in Dublin and is scheduled for release in June next year.
