My Family: Britain's Miserable Family Sitcom 

Yes I did spend this video referring to 'series' as 'seasons' on purpose - given the show's American roots it felt appropriate

Interesting fact. Robert Lindsay, who plays Ben, had begun to experience some success in movies. Then, one of his costars in one movie got mistreated by Harvey Weinstein and he stood up for her. In return, Weinstein ended Lindsay's big screen career.

My biggest problem with this show is I openly hated the fact he was constantly moaning about being poor, while living in a house which was 10 times bigger than my council house I grew up in.

As an Australian, i feel you on the 'no one remembers this show'. But i do. And I love it.

The vengeful father performing forced surgery on a man he believes assaulted his daughter is the plot of Antonio Banderas film The Skin I Live In.

The Series' with Nick were easily it's golden years. In its latter days, it did feel more and more like a show the BBC just kept making on autopilot and forgot to cancel. And when they finally did, it got zero fanfare, the least episode not being any kind of finale.

I have a real soft spot for My Family. It is one of those shows I remember watching in the living room on the big tele with my parents and two sisters, it always made me feel so grown up because my parents seemed to enjoy it just as much as me. I can understand why it never really remained culturally relevant but for a kid growing up in the 00s it was something to look forward to because it meant the family would all be together. After my dad passed away I used to always watch reruns if I caught them flicking through the channels because Robert Lindsay looked so much like my dad and that comforting feeling of the whole family relaxing in front of the tele after a day of school/work would come flooding back. Thanks for this hit of nostalgia, I did not know how much I needed it.

honestly there's no way this series would've worked without the two leads being as good actors as they are. Stage legends Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker in the same show, pretty much knocking it out the park even if the script was hit and miss (which got even more so as it went on). edit: Gosh, if My Family is forgotten, imagine discussing MY HERO. Just as popular in its day, even less loved by the critics and even more forgotten. edit 2: I don't think all British people are miserable and sniping all the time, but I think most British people either have some element of this to their character or have periods of their life that they fall into doing this. A lot of us have this sort of... Camus-esque reaction to life, but we also then deal with it in multiple different and conflicting ways.

British TV at its best tends to be very rooted geographically and socially. Even fictional places - wetherfield, Walford, Sunhill, Dibley you know exactly who, where and what it’s about. My family is sort of a vague middle class London that’s presented as relatable to everyone.

That ending segment of inadvertently needing chaos and misery reminded me of a quote I saw scrawled on the side of a deconsecrated church: "There's a dark part of you that enjoys the bad things that happen to you, And until you realize that, the patterns will repeat."

I watched it when I was younger with my family, and I guess because I was a kid and British I never noticed just how depressing it is, guess that was the appeal tho.

I feel like the reason why it doesn't get called a classic is because there's no big real big moments. Like batman and robin in Only Fools and Horses, the runaway balloon in Dads Army, the puddle in Vicar of Dibley or the Witch Finder in Black Adder.

Speaking of Kris Marshall and Death in Paradise, I think it's worth mentioning the spinoff that he stars in, Beyond Paradise. A third series has been confirmed I believe and I'm not surprised, it's fantastic cozy telly and he really is quite good in the role.

When My Family was airing, whoever wrote Pick of the Day for the Daily Mail's TV guide Weekend chose it every week so they could give it a low rating & ask why it's still being made.

It was something you watched because it was on.

I'm Australian and this show gives me so much nostalgia! Great video!

As an American I never heard of this one, but the closest American equivalent I can think of is Married with Children. That also features a family and focuses on a miserable burnout of a father, in this case one whose best days are behind him and is resigned to mostly slog his way through life throwing and receiving barbs from his wife and propping up his idiot kids. I think the main difference would be that there’s a level of deliberate exaggeration in Married with Children that’s beyond what I’m seeing the clips you showed, so that if it’s a mirror to American family life it’s one of those warped funhouse mirrors.

I don't remember anyone ever liking it. I remember everyone saying "it's mediocre but the son is good." That was it, just one character that people liked.

I used to love My Family...but you're right, I basically haven't thought about it since it ended.

Nick tuning the family piano has to be one of my favourite TV moments of all time

For me 2point4 Children was a similar kind of show, I think people forgot how surreal and dark it could get at times.

The episode “I Second That Emulsion” with Nick tuning the piano throughout the episode had me in stitches with the payoff at the end.

I loved "My Family" & went to Pinewood Studios many times to watch it being recorded live. The chemistry between Zoe & Rob was incredible on set & when Kris was in the show it was at its best. I love Ben's character it appeals to my sarcastic & deadpan sense of humour that I grew up with like Basil Fawlty & comedian Jack Dee. It had a good run.

Cuckoo with Greg Davies was also a good comedy about a miserable middle class father (he played a solicitor). That ran for 5 years!😅😅😅

I feel like, in addition to your honest and fantastic points, why this series has been buried in the comedy memory is because it doesn't have a strong "the one with" episode. You know "the one with", everyone does. The one with the giant kitten. The one with Motorhead and University Challenge. The one with the giant maggots. So many people, no matter how long it has been since a repeat of that episode, will at least remember it. I remember watching My Family and liking it, but I have no other details than that.

Felt like this was on DAILY for my entire childhood & adolescence. Every night, on one of the channels (terrestrial and satellite), somewhere. Then one day, it simply evaporated, as if it never was.

This show used to come on late night in Canada, can't remember the network. They also ran Keeping up with Appearances, Are You Being Served, Father Ted, Fawlty Towers and of course Black Adder. Loved all of them! They largely informed my notion of British people when I was young, lol. Can't believe I forgot it existed until I saw your thumbnail. Gonna have to find this somewhere to rewatch.

It also helped that the two leads were Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker.

We had this show in Australia too. I'd almost completely forgotten about it!

I adored this show growing up, and despite watching it and only fools just as much as eachother, I can remember most episodes of only fools and cant remember a single thing that happened in my family. The only thing I remember was being disappointed when Nick left, the actors carried that show.

Seeing the thumbnail for this video I just had a "oh, so that's what it's called" moment. I rarely recall watching this show, I kinda feel that this is one of those shows that we only ever really had on when my parents never managed to pay for the cable bill, and this show was on the small handful of channels that we still got for free on the cable box or on Freeview box that would have still been yanked from one the bedroom TVs. I also faintly remember this show airing more frequently when I lived with my grandparents, I'm not sure if she was ever really engaged, but we all generally hung out in the office, my grandfather and I generally on the PC and my grandmother absorbed in a crossword, reading or knitting, right before BBC news at 9 fired up for perusal before we hit the hay. I feel that this was generally a show which came in a fun era, my grandparents living in a decent area had cable a good few years before we did, I remember when we finally got it, virgin media bought telewest out a few years later and there was generally a huge explosion of American content available to us vs the 4.5 channels we used to get on TV, and so a lot of shows like this just generally fell by the way side when you could tune over to comedy central and have a good laugh at alan harpers expense.

This is the first video of yours I've seen, and I really enjoyed it. I haven't watched a show made past around 2012 or so, but I like media analysis a lot. There are two really underrated British shows I love, I've only met one person who has seen both, Teachers and The Book Group, and I'd be interested on hearing your thoughts on them after having watched several of your other videos.

I watched this show for the first time when I was 6 years old and immediately fell in love with it, recording episodes on VHS and then begging for them all on DVD, I ended up with 2 copies of the series 1 dvd as I watched it so much I wore out the disc. This show was pure gold and I can still recite most episodes by heart. Thinking about it now though, I’m was probably too young for such a misanthropic world view that this show preached.

Wow I really appreciated this indepth analysis. I'm an american about your age, in the PNW, and I grew up watching this show with my own family at dinner all the time for years as a young teen. We watched lots of BBC shows, like the others you mention, and doctor who which is why I found your channel years ago. With My Family, you hit every point so well. It was cynical, which is why my mom liked it- she was always like that, but to the point of abusive unfortunately, and was very controlling, while my dad was very quiet. So watching this show was like getting to see my dad's internal monologue on the outside. There were a lot of different ways the two characters reflected either of my parents, it was odd. I wouldn't say we were like the kids though, but all kids do go through these various life events that the show covered. And Ben and Susan handled them just as poorly as my parents did. And we laughed at the show a lot. But so much of it hit too close to home. So you are absolutely right. Its why we don't rewatch it, but have looked back at some Vicar, or Faulty Towers or Blackadder, whatever, because those were more removed from our everyday. Anyway, really enjoyed this video and looking back on it. I do actually have the DVD's that my mom bought back then so we could rewatch episodes at that time, since we did love it, despite its darkness. Robert Lindsay is amazing, we had recognized him from Hornblower series, lol. We're some weird americans I guess. :) I honestly think that the studios were wrong though- Americans can be very cynical too and I think many would eat this kind of show up, especially nowadays.

I'm really proud of nick he went on to become a fantastic crime scene detective.

It's a very real reflection of British life from what I have experienced. I have no problem in realising the older I get the more like Ben I am becoming.

oh my fucking god is that the lady Cassandra O'Brien

It's amazing how this show shares parallels with the show After You've Gone. The pursuit of not needing to deal with the chaos while knowing that's exactly what the character needs in their life I remember coming home from school and often putting these two shows on and loving most, if not all, the episodes and not really understanding the ture weight of the situations at hand but loving them anyway So really good video keep up the good work

Seeing this video on my recommeneded was the first time I'd thought about My Family in like 15 years - watched it all the time as a kid but moved on and forgot all about it

I wasn't aware that 'My Family' had US-influence in its roots, but I'm entirely unsurprised! It was so formulaic in the way it fell into that "sitcom genre" in the way that US sitcoms do. The way episodes are structured, the setting, the way particular types of scenes are inserted, the roles particular characters play. I think British sitcoms don't historically tend to fall into such formulaic tropes, each has more of it's own authorial sense, written as it's own thing rather than being written "as a sitcom" quite so much, if you get what I mean? I always saw 'My Family' as being successful (and funny) because of the quality of the actors, which is also what tends to distinguish US sitcoms. If all the writing is much-of-a-muchness, the delivery is what distinguishes success from failure. If it wasn't envisioned by an American, I'd have assumed it was written by a Brit with a love for US sitcoms. (Compare it to 'Outnumbered' which is ostensibly a very similar setting/concept/tone. The episodes of 'Outnumbered' are more idiosyncratic, less predictable, _much_ less formulaically "setup-tension-punchline" than 'My Family'.)

The dynamic between Susan and Ben is a lot like Victor and Margret in One Foot in the Grave. Only difference is Victor rages about the world and when hes confronted with a problem with Margret hes fearlessly devoted. Look at the caravan episode. He loves that thing and tries to trash it for Margrets sake. Also, when she falls ill he drops all his silly obsession with it and goes to her side.

I never thought in my 21 years on this planet I’d see a video on my family, I grew up watching this show in the mid-late 00’s & used to love it (mostly for Ben) going back to it, the later seasons with Rodger & Abbey are big misses for me, i completely forgot this show ran for so so long

I watched this all the time as a kid. It was one of my favourite shows along with Doctor Who. I was in first school watching My Family.

As a very cynical and negative person who rarely displays outward enthusiasm about anything even when I feel enthusiastic on the inside, and doesn't really display emotion at all despite feeling it on the inside to a very small amount, I very strongly associate with the characters of My Family despite not having a family myself and I deeply enjoy and laugh hard at the cynical humour in the show and I love how it has zero schmaltz or happiness to it at all, on the rare occasion it gets serious for a single moment it gets downright depressing like how Susan is at first glad her slobbish son, Nick, has moved out because of his slovenly behaviour, and his unkempt bedroom and appearance and poor hygiene but slowly comes to miss his antics and there's a scene where she is in his old bedroom reminiscing about the past wishing he was still there and hadn't left yet recognising he is no longer the child she once doted on and he had to leave the nest but it still doesn't make it any easier on her. "Is the negative view of My Family so normal in Britain that nobody noticed?" YES. Even when it comes to American sitcoms, I prefer the negative cynical ones like Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Arrested Development, and I want to start watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia one day. I guess the main difference is in America those kinds of sitcoms are explicitly exclusively for adults whereas My Family is for families... "Why doesn't Ben and Susan divorce?" Because they love each other very deeply and the ways they express their love for each other is extremely British and sarcastic yet simultaneously sincere? Obviously? As somebody who has spent half a decade unemployed and discovered how boring and miserable it is, I definitely don't want to retire and stop working one day when I do finally manage to get a job. I love My Family, I got the whole collection on DVD I seen it all 3 times now...

Apparently the cast and the writers hated each other on this. There was huge tension between them constantly. The writer Paul Rose (he generally goes by the name Mr Biffo online) joined the writing team at one point and was dead excited to meet Richard Lyndhurst. When he was introduced to him Lyndhurst just snarled "Oh, have they told what a bastard I am?" (or something along those lines) and stalked off.

I'm not entirely sure i agree with your conclusion, mainly because critical darlings like Peep Show and The Office are also cynical reflections of repressed people and have lasted in the public legacy. I think the real issue with My Family is sitcoms, whether they are cynical or idealistic, need to want you to stay with the characters in a sort of parasocial relationship. People always want Gavin and Stacy back because they genuinely want to know what they're up to these days, as if they're old friends who moved away. Crappy 70s sitcoms from back in the day are still loved by those who watched them (On the Buses etc) because they hung out with them every week. Same goes for other shows like Father Ted, Miranda, the Royal Family, Inbetweeners, Vicar of Dibley etc. The issue with My Family is there's no real affection or empathy with the characters, which even very purposefully cynical shows like Peep Show build up. The central marriage is little more than a hollow series of boomer "i hate my spouse" jokes straight out of a newspaper comic, the kids are all replaced season by season. Nobody was watching it and genuinely interested in the Abi/Roger storyline, for example.

This show brings back a lot of childhood memories for me. Also get those feelings every time i see Kris Marshall on Death/Beyond Paradise.

The last bit of this is one of the best last bits I've seen. The bit where he starts swearing.

( 1:45 ) Not Going Out is the longest running one now I think.

I remember being at school and telling a schoolfriend about Modern Family and he thought I was talking about this show. I remember My Family being on all the time but I only ever watched a handful of episodes.

please talk about keeping up appearances, i feel like you could write a 2 hour video on the relationship between hyacinth and Richard Bucket. oh... i mean "bouquet"

I haven’t watched the show in years, but I remember thinking that Nick was neurodivergent coded. I’m dyspraxic, autistic, and have ADHD, and I could see traits of myself and other ND people I know in his character: *Jumping from special interest to special interest *Being generally clumsy *Getting fired from every job he has due to perceived incompetence (which is more than likely a lack of executive functioning skills) *People assuming he’s an idiot when he has moments of brilliance that show he’s actually very intelligent …etc

Frasier had an episode where Martin couldn't say "I love you" to Frasier. It's not just a British thing.

I watched and loved My Family in the US. The issue is that it aired at odd hours on PBS (not a channel known for sitcoms). It came on in between the afternoon kids shows and before the news and prime time. I don’t think our broadcasters gave it a chance

I know two things about this show: 1. I've seen some of the Christmas specials when they were played on the ABC here in Australia, pretty funny 2. The mother makes a joke about moisturizing in an episode since she voiced Lady Cassandra in Doctor Who

id love to see a video on Royale Family. That comedy got so depressing because of how Flanderized the characters got

I remember my father always would watch this. Quite fond of it myself though.

I used to watch this all the time as a kid back in the 2000's and I really liked it. It's no Blackadder or anything like that, but it's still pretty good. Thanks for the nostalgia.

Oh man, this brought back some memories. Forgot this show even existed.

Oddly I grew up watching re-runs of My Family, and always enjoy watching it XD. Ben Harper is my spirit animal at times, a kind of resigned to his fate depression I can really relate to

I hold My Family up in the same pantheon as One Foot In the Grave. Both of them have unlikeable protagonists, who end up being justified in their reactions to things that happen around them. Victor Meldrew and Ben Harper are the stand-ins for every person exasperated with the stupidity of others.

From taking a quick glimpse at this videos thumbnail it looks like the video will be about A Nightmare On Elm Street.

I loved growing up watching this show with my family.

I saw Kris Marshall in the film Deathwatch and I half expected him to go “full Nick” in it.

This popped up all of a sudden in my feed because months ago I was looking for a video essay done on my family and couldn’t find anything

The early seasons of this were honestly so funny, I rewatched them for the first time in god knows how many years recently and it really holds up!

This was a great video thanks for doing it.

Really fun to see someone talk about my family

For me my family felt pretty much real this is how my family is like.

And yet there's still more love shown among this family than in most American sitcoms.

Between this and Episodes it's really interesting getting to see your takes on sitcoms I watched ae a teen. I kinda forgot about them until you did but I remember quite liking them, and maybe it's because they reflect this kind of cynical attitude about the world in a way a lot of comedies don't.

John Barrowman appeared in an episode, while Daniela Denby-Ashe popped up in Torchwood. Also, Robert Lindsay was a candidate for the Doctor in the nineties. Not a bad choice, he kind of resembles Patrick Troughton.

Oh my god it’s the 12th AND 13th Doctor Who Kris Marshall!! Oops, slipped into a different reality for a second

I am from NZ and my family loved watching this. It is really different, it has an American premise but has the same sort of Britishness as waiting for god or keeping up Appearances had. I love British comedies.

Used to watch right after Eastenders on Fridays

i remember it, mainly because the nick character looked just like one of our mates - we used to tell people he was the actor, funny

I think the brilliance of this show is that for a certain generation it was comical reality. Same was as modern family. It’s the idea of the new labour era generation who have attained a level of success though it’s still not as easy as they thought. A underlying love between the parents that’s hidden beneath a healthy comical contempt. Kids who love there parents but don’t know how to show it etc etc. maybe my household was just screwed up but this felt like my house 😅😅

I watched this on BBC America. Loved it.

American here. I am very nostalgic for this show. We got it on BBC America in the early 2000s. I was a big Harry Potter kid and such, we read the books when they first came to the states and all that, and I saw the actress who played Madame Hooch was in this show, so I wanted to watch this show. And I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. I did a rewatch of the first few series a couple of years back and still really enjoyed it. I don't know if I liked it because of my tastes or if my tastes are what they are because I liked that, but I tend to enjoy de-romanticized tropes. The perfect relationship, the perfect neighbor, the consequence-free wacky hijinx, all that light and fluffy storytelling common to sitcoms, rom-coms, and other forms of light comedy, I tend to enjoy them more when they're portrayed a little more cynically. Comedies where people are working and struggling at things that seem to magically just happen in other forms of light media.

I love this show always seen it as a successor to 2 point 4 children but i love my family one of my favourite shows

i love my family, my fav ep is prob the weakest link one, i just realised susans american boss is also cpatain holister from red dwarf

There are times where the actor playing the father in this series bears a passing resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones.

It is pretty much impossible to talk about a British show without a random tangent about what Doctor Who actors have been in it. This show was my bread and butter for so many years i still revisit it sometimes

I don't know about you all, but it very much reminds me of "Married... With Children".

Loved watching this with my dad

Great analysis (subbed!). For me, I think it has to be the only sitcom I've ever watched in which none of the characters struck me as particularly likeable. I didn't hate any of them, but it all just felt very 'beige' to me. To this day, it still gives me that horrible 'Sunday blues' feeling.

I love the show and watch it now and again. I also think it was ahead of it's time too. The Michael coming out episode was really well done.

I remember watching this and mt hero growing up, i miss the gold old days

Honestly one of my fav shows I used to watch it on the bus on iplayer to college and honestly my fav ep is the son will come out as it’s very similar to my experience of coming out

Long running sitcoms are no indicator of quality. As Time Goes By lasted for 67 episodes. The Upper Hand lasted for 94 episodes. Last of the Summer Wine lasted for 295 episodes. I've watched each and every one of those episodes and not one of those shows had more than 12 episodes worth of ideas.

The only good thing about the show was kris marshall, and he jumped ship at the earliest opportunity (admittedly going on to star in Love Actually, which is like jumping off the Titanic, smashing through the floor of a lifeboat, plummeting 2000 fathoms, and beating the Titanic itself to the seabed.

Oooh, i saw My Family growing up. I remember enjoying the early ones and the later ones were certainly episodes of a show that was on tv. And that opinion still held when I rewatched it. But it's no more depressing than keeping up appearances

My Family is why I wanted Kris to be the Doctor

I still hear quotes from this show regularly. Also, from experience, this is both how people tend to behave (not constantly introspective) and how parents also tend to behave on the "not bringing up that they may have failed" point.

I remember watching it on TV in Canada as a kid. Was a wild show

With successful shows from the real TV era there's two types. "Timeless classics" and "There's nothing better around right now" and this show fit well into the second category. It was functional but it just wasn't that good. It was on terrestrial tv and we only had 5 channels to choose from so it got viewers and got renewed, but doesn't come close to breaking top ten, and its probably much further down in the beloved uk sitcom list.

I'd forgotten about this show. Used to watch it as a kid back in the day.

My parents, specifically my dad, recently were rewatching most of this. Tbh, it never seemed that depressing to me when I saw it on. It fits in quite nicely amongst the other TV shows we have where nobody is all that happy, and even when things are going well, something goes wrong. I think that's something prevalent even in our kids shows. It's like, rather than things getting better by the end of the episode, they return to a rather bland, maybe miserable status quo. The trotters are still broke and playing with the law. The inbetweeners are still looser teenagers suffering through A-levels. Faulty Towers is still barely fit for function as a hotel, if that. Strange hill high is still a miserable mess of a highschool. And even when the status quo isn't miserable or depressing, it's still returned to: Shawn the sheep still lives in the barn under the watchful eye of the dog and less watchful eye of the farmer. The tellytubbies still go to sleep in their beds. Everyone in Gavin and Stacey is still a bit of a weird mess of a person with complicated relationships with some of the other characters. East Enders is still full of interpersonal drama and general messy chaos. And even when the plot does move forwards somewhat, there's still a sort of status quo in the tone. Because you just know that delboy is gonna squander all that money from the pocket watch and go back to being broke. The characters in Gavin and Stacey are a bit of a jolly mess. Shawn is still gonna have to hide the evidence if his shenanigans from the farmer eventually. I think it's comfort in the status quo that stops it being too miserable. Like, sure. All these stories are varying amounts of fun or miserable, but as much as they won't get better, they also won't get worse. And that's comforting I guess.

It's wild to see this come up on my home page because it was always on in Canada where I live for some reason but I haven't thought about it in a decade. I quite enjoyed it, but it definitely had a different tone from American sitcoms we got in the 2000s at the time. I still love Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker's portrayals of the parents though.

So from the comments and as someone who has watched this show several times (yes, I am one of those people, I actually do like the show, it isn't the best but I think the actors make it), I think we all concur that it should have ended when Nick left. They tried to replace him with Alfie, Abi etc. and it just didn't work. No shame on those actors, Nick was just brilliant, shown by the fact his actor is one of the few still with an active career now. I will admit there aren't many episodes that stand out, I guess again the few that do are Nick ones and are based on what Nick does - i.e. Nick has a new flat was one of my favourites, just seeing the joy Ben has at the prospect of Nick moving out. But you are right it hasn't aged well. One of the criticisms I'm seeing by people I don't agree with though. They don't go on about being poor. Ben goes on about the kids trying to take all his money, which is a very different matter 😂