A blow for the Morality Police everywhere

I know I've been notably absent the past few days, but I have been busy painting and drawing for Miss K's new bedroom. To make it up to all of you wonderfully patient people today, I have a new rant for you.

The latest comedy offering from Britain to hit Australia's televisions is a show called Mrs Brown's Boys. We have only just received the first season down here in the past couple of months, and so far it is proving to be quite popular. Now at the end of each show as they are advertising next week's episodes, they have small grabs of reviews of the show flashing onto the screen, and none of the reviews are flattering at all. One review last night called the show "filthy smut parading as comedy". While most producers would be heartbroken by such harsh criticisms of their show, the makers of Mrs Brown's Boys are celebrating the fact that they are hated by the Morality Police, and are using it as a selling point for the show.

Now the reviews may be technically correct, the show is indeed quite crude and almost amateurish, however it does have some incredibly funny moments in it, and the dialogue can be quite clever. But to call it shocking would be an overstatement, especially in a world where shows like Little Britain and Family Guy are regularly aired on public channels. If the show had come out twenty years ago when swearing was rarely heard on our television screens, then yes this show would have been quite shocking, and the boycotts would have been huge. But in these days of YouTube where nothing is secret any more, I think we've become so desensitised to what used to be considered inappropriate that a show like this is nothing more than mindless entertainment.

So this begs the question, do we really have a need for the morality police any more considering that these days there is no clear cut rules to what is immoral any more? When books like 50 Shades of Grey are being sold openly on the shelves of every book store instead of from under the counter of adult stores only, what right does anyone have to say that something is too shocking to be viewed by the masses? Of course everything I have mentioned here is indeed inappropriate for children, but that is a different subject altogether, and they indeed should be protected from all of this. But that isn't really what bothers the morality police when they get their knickers in a knot over shows like Mrs Brown's Boys. The show is already only screened at an hour when children are long in bed, so there is no risk of young eyes seeing anything they shouldn't. But why do some people still think that adult eyes need to be protected so vigorously? I thought that we had gotten past the shame that we are all human, we've admitted as a whole society that we all go to the toilet, we all have sex, we all like sex and we all have grooming habits that can be quite unattractive. Shows that laugh at all of the base elements of humans, while being incredibly low brow, can still be very funny. And I don't think there is anyone alive who can say with complete honesty that they have never laughed when someone farted in a public place. 


Luckily for the people who enjoy shows like Mrs Brown's Boys, it appears that no one listens to the Morality Police any more, and it appears that sometimes they go out of their way to produce shows like this just to piss them off. But in a way this benefits everyone. The Morality Police have something new to bitch about, and the rest of us have something to laugh at. I know which one I prefer.