Moone Boy is a sitcom set in Ireland between 1989 and 1992.
Martin Moone is 12 years old and lives in the town of Boyle, County Roscommon. Joined by his Imaginary Friend, Sean Murphy (played by Chris O'Dowd), Martin comes up with a different Zany Scheme each week to navigate the obstacles that are put before him. The youngest of four children, he has to contend with three older sisters, as well as the perils of school.
This show provides examples of:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Liam and Debra lapse into this from time to time. For example, when Martin is trying to ask his art teacher to the school dance, Debra walks up and hands him a spare pair of underpants, stating that he can't handle school milk.
- Ambiguously Gay: Martin's best friend Padraic in several episodes, such as when he caddies for Liam and gives him a "supportive" pat on the butt. On the other hand, he gets a girlfriend on his first day of secondary school, though this is thanks to having a knowledge of Dirty Dancing. It's further expanded upon with a Visual Pun of him sleeping in a closet.
- Anachronism Stew: Joe Moone's memories of the Irish Civil War end up as this, thanks to his Alzheimer's. Nukes, Napoleon and Godzilla all play a part in it. As a tribute after Joe's death, Martin incorporates some of these elements into his Civil War re-enactment.
- Artistic License – Geography: Played for laughs. Martin and Padraig seem to believe that most of the world's landmarks are in Dublin.
- Author Avatar: Martin and Sean are this for Chris O'Dowd.
- Bland-Name Product: Readybix for Weetabix, right down to the collection of tokens from the box in exchange for a bicycle. Weight Wishers is stated to be an affordable version of Weight Watchers. Series 2 adds "Toilet Drake", a substitute for Toilet Duck and series 3 adds Body Margarine as a cheaper competitor for Body Butter.
- The Bully: Conner and Jonner Bonner. Declan Mannion as well, but he is also willing to be a Bully Hunter for a fee.
- Bumbling Dad: Liam, particularly his attempt to explain "The Birds and the Bees" to Martin.
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Martin and Padraig wear them to hide stolen items during their shoplifting spree. Unfortunately, since Boyle is a small town, there are only so many places they can rob.
- Corrupt Church: Parodied with the altar boys. They run a scam modelled after The Mafia where they steal communion wafers and change from collection plates.
- Cloud Cuckoo Land: Boyle itself.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Martin.
- Crazy-Prepared: Martin always carries a magnifying glass and a bag of marshmallows for whenever the need should arise.
- Deadpan Snarker: Sean Murphy. Martin's mother as well.
- Death Glare: Sinead does this to the moon.
- Deliberately Monochrome: George Gershwin, being the product of the imagination of an old man, is completely black and white.
- Disney Death: George Gershwin is assumed to have kicked the bucket following Joe's passing, only to turn up at his own funeral as Sean is delivering the eulogy.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Crunchie has a breakdown when Padraig's parents run into marital difficulty and begins drinking heavily. Padraig himself does the same with undiluted Ribena.
- Eccentric Townsfolk: The Moones are probably the sanest people in Boyle, which really says something.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Martin falls into this every couple of lines.
- Embarrassing Nickname: In season 2, Liam starts calling Dessie "Lifewrecker"
- Liam himself is nicknamed The Rubber Bandit by his bank manager/rival.
- Everyone Has Standards: Father Linehan, the progressive priest who shows a surprising tolerance for most religions and teen pregnancy, takes issue to two things: imaginary friends, which he calls Martin on for bringing his up in his debut episode, and Protestants.
- Generic Name: Sean Murphy calls Martin out on giving him such a "safe" name and compares Padraig's imaginary friend's name.
- Genius Ditz: Padraig, despite being a fairly scatterbrained kid, has surprising knowledge on some subjects.
- Martin is this as well. He picks up the Romanian language in a ridiculously short period of time, having spent an afternoon with a Romanian family and figures out on his own that Fidelma is pregnant, something the rest of his family fail to spot.
- Glory Days: Liam was once the greatest handball player in Boyle, until The Leech broke his hand with a rock he carved into the shape of a ball.
- Hidden Depths: Liam reveals in the second season that he is fluent in Irish.
- Padraic has a surprisingly good grasp of Irish history and is knowledgeable about girls.
- Hot for Teacher: On his first day of secondary school, Martin develops a crush on his art teacher.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: One of the streets of Dublin is actually titled "Doomed To Fail Street" with the same phrase in Irish above it.
- Imaginary Friend: Sean Murphy is this to Martin. In addition to this, many of the other children around Boyle have them and they appear to be capable of interacting with each other.
- Interchangeable Asian Cultures: When Martin's parents have their 20th wedding anniversary, Martin discovers that the appropriate gift is china. Martin believes that this means something Chinese, as opposed to crockery, so he gets them a katana.
- Lethal Chef: Trisha's method of cooking is just throwing sausages, rice and random vegetables into a pot until the bag the rice comes in dissolves.
- Mad Artist: Martin's art teacher is questionably sane to say the least. That is, when she's not perving on the P.E. teacher.
- Mistaken for Pregnant: Inverted. Fidelma is actually pregnant in series 2 and is mistaken for fat by her P.E. teacher.
- Mood Whiplash: For such a light-hearted comedy show, Joe Moone's death can come as a bit of a shock to most viewers.
- New Old Flame: Liam meets his ex-girlfriend while on holiday in "The Sunny Southeast". She holds raves in her hotel room despite being 43.
- No Periods, Period: "What do you mean the moon's gonna make me bleed?! I'll make the moon bleed!"
- Not So Above It All: At the end of "Ghost Raft", Father Roche, the uptight and very not-progressive senior pastor at the church, is revealed to be a voodoo practitioner.
- Perpetual Poverty: Liam is a self-employed signmaker who isn't doing great business. He's generally in trouble with his mortgage.
- Pillow Pistol: Sinead sleeps with a knife under her pillow, something she threatens Padraig and Martin with when Padraig moves into Martin's closet.
- Poor Man's Porn: Women's tennis, animated shampoo commercials and Cosmopolitan magazine.
- Present-Day Past: Invoked with some of the Shout Outs being to more modern works, but not in such ways that they are directly done (for example, Padraig's art class name is "iPod", Liam's nickname at the bank is "The Rubber Bandit", etc.).
- Product Placement: "Handball Duel" revolves around Martin's desire to buy a Sega Mega Drive.
- Put on a Bus: Fidelma disappears after getting married to Dessie in the series 2 finale.
- The Bus Came Back: But they return when living with Dessie's mother is too much for Fidelma.
- Reference Overdosed: Chock full out Shout Outs to pop culture from The '80s and the early part of The '90s, as well as some to more recent works, such as a banner at a school disco displaying the phrase "God is our DJ", referring to "God Is A DJ" by Faithless.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: One kids spraypaints the word "Graffity" on the walls of the school. The teacher is mad at him, not for vandalising the school, but for misspelling the word graffiti.
- Sanity Ball: Liam and Debra take turns at being the sane parent, depending on which one of them is in focus. Trisha picks it up when they both drop it.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Liam's father is so far gone from Alzheimer's Disease that he can't even recognise a recent photograph of himself. The Moones stick him in an old folks' home and only visit him once a year. He also has an imaginary friend who is Deliberately Monochrome.
- Shout-Out: In "Another Prick in the Wall", one of Martin's schoolmates quotes Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" when praising him for his dismantling of the brick wall between his house and the school.
- Shout-Out Theme Naming: Martin keeps a donkey named Donkey Kong.
- Sibling Fusion: Martin pictures his schoolyard bullies the Bonner Brothers as a single two-headed giant during an Imagine Spot.
- The Snark Knight: Trisha.
- Something We Forgot: When the Moones go on holiday to Donegal, around halfway there they realise that they left the immersion on and drive all the way back. Later, they realise they left Padraig behind when they return home.
- Teen Pregnancy: Fidelma gets knocked up by the keyboard player of the church choir.
- Theme Naming: Pádraig and his parents, Pat and Paddy.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Or, in the common parlance of the Kingdom of Boyle, "Oh, balls!"
- Titled After the Song:
- "Another Prick in the Wall" plays off of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall".
- "Where the Streets Do Have Names" references the U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Names".
- [Verb] This!: In a Funny Background Event, a teacher's car has been overturned and spraypainted with the phrase "Drive This!"
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: It's never explicitly stated which town or which county the Moones holiday in other than a vague "The Sunny South East", but in reality, this was a tourism slogan used to refer to Waterford and Wexford during The '80s and The '90s.
