The Young Offenders (BBC One, Friday, 9.30pm) is the latest example of an Irish comedy thriving in its natural habitat: British television. In the tradition of Father Ted and Derry Girls, Peter Foott’s Cork-set series has returned to BBC One a full year before it is due to belatedly air on RTÉ.
With Montrose still reckoning with the fallout from 2023′s year of scandals, the absence from the schedules of a playful comedy may not feel like a seismic omission. Still, how grim that ambitious writers and producers are required to knock on doors in London so that their work can see the light of day.
It’s hard to think of a worse indictment of public service broadcasting in Ireland (actually, there is a worse indictment and it is called The Full Irish Hidden Camera Show, but let’s leave that for another time).
As to the series itself, The Young Offenders maintains its beloved anarchic tones as it comes back around for a fourth season. As the story opens, the Laurel and Hardy-esque duo of Conor (Alex Murphy) and Jock (Chris Walley) are enjoying a “free holiday to Colombia”, where they have been unwittingly recruited as drug mules. They’re caught at the airport and banged off to prison. Three years later, Conor is released while Jock continues to bide his time in a deep, dark hole somewhere (he’ll return towards the end of the latest run of episodes).
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The Young Offenders, it has to be acknowledged, is not for everyone. The humour is not subtle – sometimes it isn’t even humour, just elevated pratfalling. Gags fall between lowbrow and no-brow, and you do need to be in the mood. But it is nonetheless heartening to see the northside of Cork City on screen – a reminder urban Ireland doesn’t end with Dublin gangsters shooting one another (as the RTÉ drama department seemingly believes).
Even if you don’t like the gags, an underlying sweetness makes The Young Offenders worth sticking with. Conor is a lost soul who has never really come to terms with the death of his father. As the new series begins, his girlfriend Linda (Demi Isaac Oviawe) reveals she is engaged to a rival scallywag, which causes Conor to have meltdown on her doorstep before gardaí arrive to haul him back to prison.
The entire affair floats along with an air of gentle anarchism, and it must be admitted that it lacks both the rat-tat-tat wit of Derry Girls and the joyous surrealism of Father Ted. But it’s great to see Cork on television – unless you’re a licence fee payer who doesn’t have access to the BBC. In which case, you’re going to have to cool your heels until 2025.
