The Burkes Join Gogglebox Ireland

Ireland’s most entertaining family will swap the courts and school gates for the Gogglebox couch this week as the new season of the popular TV show returns to Virgin Media One.

Following years of making headlines for their staunch religious shenanigans, Seán, Martina, Simeon, Enoch and Ammi will, for the first time, sit down together to watch mainstream television that isn’t streamed from an evangelical Christian network in the US.

“We went through 13 flatscreen TVs during filming as Martina kept taking off her shoes and throwing them at the screen every time she spotted a rainbow flag,” a Gogglebox producer told WWN.

During one episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Simeon can be seen being doused with a saucepan of cold water by his father before being sent to “the room under the stairs” for commenting on how some of the drag artists “really look like attractive women.”

In another clip, Enoch and his mother argue at length during Married at First Sight after she suggests it “might not be a bad idea” to set him up with one of her friend’s daughters, saying it “could be good if he finally got a girlfriend and settled down instead of constantly chatting with his male prison pals on WhatsApp.”

At one point, filming was abruptly halted after Ammi tried to perform a citizen’s arrest on the TV for “promoting sodomy.”

In a post production interview, the Burke family later described the whole Gogglebox experience as “deeply traumatising but less so than watching RTÉ’s Late Late Show.”