Gleesons’ new sitcom Frank of Ireland shows Irish comedy has always been transferable to UK

Paul Whitington

Domhnall Gleeson and Brian Gleeson in Frank of Ireland

Domhnall Gleeson and Brian Gleeson in Frank of Ireland

Domhnall Gleeson in Frank of Ireland

Domhnall Gleeson and Brian Gleeson in Frank of Ireland

April 13 2021 02:30 AM

It’s the Gleesons but not as we know them in Frank of Ireland, Channel 4’s new sitcom, which kicks off this Thursday.

Co-written by the brothers and produced by Sharon Horgan, it stars Brian Gleeson as Frank Marron, an epic layabout who receives a family intervention as his birthday present. A failed 30-something musician who still lives with his mammy and doesn’t even know how to drive, he is challenged by his nearest and dearest to get his act together before it’s too late.

His response is to drift further into an inane fantasy world with the help of his best friend Doofus (Domhnall Gleeson), who is, to put it mildly, a gom.

Sarah Greene plays the girlfriend who had the good sense to leave him, Pom Boyd is hilarious as Frank’s foul-mouthed mother, and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Pat Shortt place obstacles to our hero’s progress.

Watching the trailer, you might wonder if this intensely Irish comedy might be too idiosyncratic for the UK audience at which it’s primarily aimed. But as its producer Sharon Horgan can attest, modern Irish comedy has become extremely transferable, and the British seem to love it.

Horgan, co-creator and star of the award-winning sitcom Catastrophe, is in the vanguard of an ongoing Irish comedy invasion of the British market, where stand-ups like Aisling Bea, Allson Spittle and Andrew Ryan are making waves. Dara O’Brien and Ed Byrne have been filling comedy venues over there for years, and before them Dylan Moran became a cult figure with his surreal live routines and his wonderfully bleak sitcom, Black Books. But the Irish comic bridgehead in Britain goes back even further than that.

Once upon a time, the Irish in Britain were merely the butt of jokes, but Dave Allen changed all that. A huge star on 1970s television at a time when being Irish wasn’t exactly flavour of the month in the UK, his witty routines gave the lie to stereotypical notions of Irishness.

The British and Irish senses of humour might be different, but Allen proved that gap was not insurmountable.

There’s more than a touch of Flann O’Brien-style surrealism to Frank of Ireland, but then again the same was true of Father Ted, the greatest ever Irish sitcom, even if our national broadcaster passed up the chance to make it. Who would have thought that a show about a group of dysfunctional priests living in a ramshackle house on the edge of Ireland would translate to a British audience at all, but Ted and Dougal’s ludicrous catchphrases ended up being quoted from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

The worry here was that a show about thick and drunken clerics would make us a laughing stock over there, but Channel 4’s sophisticated audiences seemed to realise that we, the Irish, were in on the joke.

One thing Father Ted couldn't really do, though, was showcase our national talent for swearing. We are, quite simply, the best in the world at it, and while poor old Ted was restricted to ‘feck’, in Frank of Ireland the curses come thick and fast. Everyone swears, not just the two idiot protagonists. “It didn’t strike me until people pointed it out,” Brian Gleeson said recently, “maybe it’s an Irish thing”.

Indeed it is, and Frank of Ireland offers further proof that, while our two nations don’t quite see eye to eye geopolitically at the minute, we can share a joke.

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