not awful

kclambeth

When my family first started it was fresh, funny and had good story lines. The characters were Ben a dentist, his wife Susan, his eldest son Nick, daughter Janey and son Michael. The interaction with the family members was strong, Nick had us all laughing with his cheeky grin and crazy schemes, Susan was the overprotective mother and Ben hated everybody.

Early episodes were well written and funny but when Nick and Janey left it went downhill. Michael was really funny but didn't get a lot to do and Ben and Susan just became extreme versions of their former selves, there was no funny friction anymore between Ben, Nick and Janey because they had gone and instead we were given a new character; the totally pointless and dull Abi who was just a idiotic copy of Phoebe from 'Friends.

With the arrival of Abi, it seemed Susan and Ben became more boring, story lines became predictable and samey and then came Roger, Ben's colleague at the dentist's and he was just pointless too, just like Abi; dumb and uninteresting.

A sitcom also needs heart and watching Ben never showing emotion to his kids, never feeling worried or proud of them is annoying, he didn't even show it to susan. i didn't think he should be slushy but one episode where he wasn't a complete grumpy dad would have made his character that bit more three dimensional.

score 6/10

kclambeth 3 May 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1648435/