Swipe to scroll horizontally

The BBC are paying another festive visit to Cork this Christmas. Jock (Chris Walley) might still be banged up abroad, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had with the rest of the gang, so read on below as we explain how to watch The Young Offenders Christmas Special online and for free with BBC iPlayer and stream from anywhere with a VPN.

If you haven’t seen The Young Offenders (where have you been!?), it initially followed the lives of Jock and Conor (Alex Murphy), two ‘loveable rogues’ from the wrong side of Cork. Season 4 saw the pair arrested after being duped into smuggling drugs in oversized parkas, with Conor receiving three years imprisonment in Ireland while Jock was condemned to a decade in Colombian jail. So explains the increasingly in-demand Chris Walley’s absence from the latest Christmas Special.

Spun-off from Peter Foott’s coming-of-age film of the same name, the show’s beating heart was the relationship between Jock and Conor, notably the gut wrenching scene in which Conor’s Mum Máiréad (Hilary Rose) brutally admonishes Jock before saving him from his abusive father and inviting him to live in their home. It’s fair to say that Season 4 suffered without the two lads together, but it still managed to soar, being as riotously funny and emotionally devastating as we’ve come to expect.