Well no suprise that this is ending. Hasn't done anything interesting in years.
BBC says goodbye to my family
- Thread starter Captain Shaw
- Start date
I have not watched BBC a sitcom in years, but as long as we still got Terry and June we will be ok.
BBC's great tradition of great comedy sitcoms has just dissapered as of the last 5/6 years
Seems to me Channel 4 are the best at comedy with The IT Crowd and The Inbetweeners being recent examples.
Generally sitcoms have very basic premises, and their story potential is quickly used up. The stories then have to get increasingly absurd and off the wall, which can be funny too, for a while. But then they are just plain absurd, and the characters tend to become catchphrase machines who just repeat things that were funny in the first four seasons.
Almost all comedies benefit from being limited run. Certainly the best loved British comedies have tended to be quite short lived.
Do you think it will be a middle class family living in London?
Weirdly enough, I had a little bit of a thing for Belinda Lang. Mind you, I preferred her vampy/arch character in Second Thoughts...
Don't they already have that thing with one of the fellows from Punt & Dennis (can't remember which is which)? Or is that ITV?
Weirdly enough, I had a little bit of a thing for Belinda Lang. Mind you, I preferred her vampy/arch character in Second Thoughts...
Don't they already have that thing with one of the fellows from Punt & Dennis (can't remember which is which)? Or is that ITV?
Outnumbered and it's on BBC One.
Another factor may be confidence: In season one, the writers and actors have no real idea what the programme is, so acting isn't confident, even though stories are well thought out.
Season two is usually written as season one was airing, so is not much inspired by viewer feedback. Acting does become more confident as character roles are established, but stories may be less enjoyable than season one as all original ideas have already been done, as you said.
It may take until about season three before the production team have a good sense how the programme is being received. If it's doing well, the programme is ripe to become primetime gold about now, with big budget and extended contracts carrying it through the next couple of seasons.
And beyond that time, the team are likely to have exhausted themselves of ideas, while the popularity of the programme makes them think they can do nothing wrong, which in synergy causes writing and acting to become over-confident, and quality soon hits the downward slope.
My Family is rubbish. I catch the occasional couple of minutes here and there and think how much better than it Robert Lindsay is. He's a god among men, and shouldn't be in that. Come to think of it, I remember an ITV show a few years back where he played a 50s detective, or something of that sort. It was quite good, and worthy of the great man.
I won't hear a word against 2.4 Children though. I quite liked that.
I won't hear a word against 2.4 Children though. I quite liked that.
I remember really enjoying the show when it first aired. A channel called YTV would air old and new BBC sitcoms at 11 in the evening and it was a neat way to watch something different. The fact that My Family was pitched as a British sitcom written with an American sensibility was interesting as well.
But yeah, I can't believe it's been on for as long as it has. Basically turning Michael gay was the last sort of plot thread they had left (and that was mostly for the gag of having his parents deal with his coming out more than anything else).
I'm sure there have been British sitcoms that have run for as long... but none come to mind. Of course, by episode count, it's still shorter than a lot of US sitcoms!
But yeah, I can't believe it's been on for as long as it has. Basically turning Michael gay was the last sort of plot thread they had left (and that was mostly for the gag of having his parents deal with his coming out more than anything else).
I'm sure there have been British sitcoms that have run for as long... but none come to mind. Of course, by episode count, it's still shorter than a lot of US sitcoms!
Yeah, 2.4 Children was great - until the last season when they brought in the orphan kid - and it was a real shame that Gary Olsen died so young.
(and also a real shame that it meant the show got replaced by My Family, which itself has now been superseded by Outnumbered...)
^I like Outnumbered, mostly for the random kid stuff, the grown ups and their plots are rubbish.
Susan develope hysterical blindness after catching Michael in bed with his g/f - hate to think how she reacted to him being gay.
It was how the hip liberal Susan couldn't handle it but how stodgy old Ben could. Funny, I guess?
And oh yeah, 2.4 Children... I loved that show. I still haven't bothered to change my sig from when I watched it years ago.
And oh yeah, 2.4 Children... I loved that show. I still haven't bothered to change my sig from when I watched it years ago.
The first couple of seasons were on the ABC here in Australia. They were actually pretty good.
I caught some later ones and they were woefully bad - I think one of the best bits of the show was the boggle-eyed son, whose name I don't remember but I think he left. After that it just seemed not as funny. Couple that with they brought in this chick who was a VERY obvious Phoebe from "Friends" rip-off and I was done!
And the irony is - I had downloaded a whole bunch of these YEARS ago and in a weekend cull to clear some space off my hard drive I just wiped them all, thinking, I will NEVER watch these things so WHY am I keeping them?!?
Oh well - no great loss, apparently.
I caught some later ones and they were woefully bad - I think one of the best bits of the show was the boggle-eyed son, whose name I don't remember but I think he left. After that it just seemed not as funny. Couple that with they brought in this chick who was a VERY obvious Phoebe from "Friends" rip-off and I was done!
And the irony is - I had downloaded a whole bunch of these YEARS ago and in a weekend cull to clear some space off my hard drive I just wiped them all, thinking, I will NEVER watch these things so WHY am I keeping them?!?
Oh well - no great loss, apparently.
I recall enjoying the first couple of series of My Family, but whether that's because it was genuinely good or whether it's just because I was younger and undemanding (I suspect it's a bit of both), it definitely took a turn for the utterly terrible. But I don't know what it is about the Beeb that they seem to think it's ok to make utterly shit sitcoms. I mean, they must know. My Family's no comedy classic, but I can think of three or four recents that make it look like a Galton and Simpson gem. Remember After You've Gone and that shit Caroline Quentin one within the past couple of years? And going further back, I remember one with Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden, and another with Jasper Carrott and Nina Wadia. These were all contemptibly awful, and the people who commissioned them must have known. So why the bloody hell do they keep making them? It wouldn't be so bad if it was ITV or something, but it's the license fee that funds them.
Perhaps there's less talent nowadays?
She's stunned, acts rather selfish (no grandchildren from Michael) and is offended by how well Ben takes the news - but then, there was that episode from one of the earlier series where Janey pretends to be a lesbian and Ben and Susan react by saying:
Susan: "I always wondered whether one of our children would turn out gay."
Ben: "My money was on Michael."