My Family - Background

Background

In 1999 Fred Barron was considering producing a British sitcom the same way sitcoms were produced in America. My Family was to feature a group of writers rather than the standard one or two, something that had been attempted in Britain with shows including Goodnight Sweetheart and On the Buses, but was nevertheless atypical. My Family was consciously designed to have wide appeal, with characters that viewers would be able to build a relationship with in the same way as previous BBC sitcom 2point4 children which focuses around the same family unit.

The show chronicles the Harper family’s lives, a fictional middle-class British family, who live in 78 Lancaster Road, Chiswick, London. Ben, a dentist, and Susan, a tour guide who later works for an art gallery, have three children, Nick, Janey and Michael, all of whom cause problems in their own way. While Susan is a control freak, Ben prefers to leave the children to it and tries not to get involved. Janey later goes to University, but drops out and moves back in later, while Nick finally gets his own place.

Mainly focusing on Ben and Susan, the show was known to feature sub-stories ranging from Nick and his harebrained schemes to Abi and Roger’s love life. It is described as a ‘dysfunctional family’ style sitcom, however many of the episodes feature the family working together to get each other out of trouble. Nick’s bizarre jobs became a major feature of the first four series. After the departure of Nick, Abi and Roger’s love life, Michael’s schemes, Janey’s endless list of boyfriends and Alfie’s dream of musical stardom became more prominent.

The show saw considerable development and change in the lives of its characters, seeing Janey turn from teenage rebel to mother, Nick turn from prat to a responsible-for-himself prat, Abi become Roger’s wife and Michael turn from schoolboy to student and beyond. Nevertheless, Ben remained the same self-absorbed dentist, Susan remained the same control freak and Alfie remained the same dim-witted layabout lodger. The characters of Nick, Brigitte, Abi and Alfie have left the series over the ten years, although Nick has returned for guest appearances a couple of times.