Home > My Family (television)

1 Setting

The show is about the antics of a British family (The Harpers) in everday life. Ben Harper (played by Lindsay) is an ignorant, boorish dentist who shows little compassion for his family, his patients or anyone else he encounters. His wife Susan (played by Wanamaker), who works as a tour guide, is a control-freak who wants to run the lives of her children, and is known for being a bad cook. Their eldest son, Nick (played by Marshall), is an eccentric 20-something man still living in with his parents. He is unable to hold a job for very long and his stupidity is often surreal.

1.1 Other characters

• Eldest daughter Janey Harper (played by Daniela Denby-Ashe ), who has temporarily left the cast and is 'away' at university. She is known as a shopaholic and also became pregnant at the age of 19.
• Youngest son Michael Harper (played by Gabriel Thompson), currently at secondary school, is known for his short-term relationships, and is the black sheep of the family, being an extremely intelligent Tory.
• The more distantly related Abi Harper (played by Siobhan HayesSiobhan Hayes (born 1962) is an actress best known for the character of Abi Harper a dumbwitted and clumsy student in British sitcom My Family. Hayes, Siobhan.), who is a dumbwitted student, and is very clumsy.
• Ben's colleague, the eternally optimistic and good-natured (much to Ben's chagrin) Roger Bailey (played by Kieron Self ), who is also a dentist. He intrudes upon and annoys Ben, who works in the office above his. He really likes Abi, but can never seem to gain the courageCourage is the ability to confront fear in the face of pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. As a virtue, courage is covered extensively in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, its vice of deficiency being cowardice, and its vice of excess being recklessn to ask her out.

2 Reception

My Family was almost universally panned by critics, but despite this the series has been popular with viewers and more successful than earlier attempts to ape the American product such as 2.4 children. It has won numerous television awards in Britain and abroad and is a rare example of a successful pre- watershedFor a term related to television programmes, see watershed (television). A watershed or water basin is the region of land that drains into a specified body of water, such as a river, lake, sea, or ocean. Rain that falls anywhere within a given body of wat modern British sitcom. Critics have pointed out that My Family also mimics many of the worst aspects of globalised mass media in that its slick production has rendered it bland and soulless.

3 Production details

The series is notable as it is scripted by a team of writers, following the American model. Historically, British sitcoms were more generally written by one or two authors. By employing a wider number of writers to brainstorm jokes for each episode, the BBC has been able to maintain a consistent and relatively long-lived product without having to wait for a single writer to produce more material.

The production values for the programme are also different to the traditional 'Brit-com'. Each episode is only 22 minutes long in order to attract foreign sales, where broadcasters need to allow extra minutes for adverts. Short additional scenes are added to the UK version to flesh it out to a full half hour. The set itself is laid out like an open plan North American house rather than a less commodious British abode and the family's standard of living is more aspirational than realistic . The first series was also shot in Field-removed videoField-removed video is a controversial technique used in television broadcasting. Once recording television programmes became common in the 1960s two options were available, film which was expensive but gave a soft, richly coloured picture and the harder, in common with American sitcoms such as FrasierFrasier was an American TV sitcom. It was a spin-off of the highly successful sitcom Cheers''. It starred Kelsey Grammer, reprising his character of Dr. Frasier Crane from the earlier series. It has become even more successful than its spin-off parent, a in order to maximise overseas sales potential.

The show used to play Monday to Thursday in CanadaCanada historically the Dominion of Canada is the second-largest, and northernmost, country in the world. It is a decentralized federation of 10 provinces and 3 territories, governed as a constitutional monarchy, and formed in 1867 through an act of Confe late nights on YTV. It has been shown on BBC America and is also available on video and DVD.