Reception
Initially, the show received a poor critical response, and many dismissed its humour as mundane and dated. In spite of this, the programme received above average audience ratings, and further series were commissioned, with critical approval gradually improving as the series progressed. Bruce Dessau, writing on the 100th episode, noted that it was a comedy that "the critics hate, but the public love", on the basis of ratings.
Star Zoë Wanamaker said in 2007 that she was no longer happy with the quality of the writing, and claimed she and co-star Robert Lindsay even refused to film one episode because it was so poor.
In May 2009, the two stars revealed they were still unhappy with the writing quality, with Robert Lindsay stating "There's some real dross (in the scripts) and we're aware of it". He later admitted that the eleventh series might be the last stating "As far as Zoe (Wanamaker) and I are concerned, we will do a tenth series of 16 episodes, which the BBC will probably split into a tenth and eleventh, then that will be it."
In 2004, the show came 24th in Britain's Best Sitcom.
Read more about this topic: My Family
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)