It was very cliched about old people (dads) and from someone like Edmondson you expect something innovative.

Quote: Chappers @ February 19 2011, 1:50 PM GMT

It was very cliched about old people (dads) and from someone like Edmondson you expect something innovative.

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Exactly, I just felt whilst watching it, that this was the kind of show Edmondson was rallying against in the 80s. But oh well, doubt we'll ever see it again.

Watching this today, I got to thinking about what would make it better...

1. The children need to be nicer. If they were a little nicer, we would see Vernon in a less sentimental, sympathetic way and his antics would seem funnier. As it is, the children are spoiled, disrespectful brats who side with their adulterous mother for material reasons and hold their father's past misdeeds against him. Yes, they have let him move in with them - but the price he pays is the further degradation of their rude and mean treatment of him.

2. Vernon needs a friend who reflects him in some way. Brian seems barely able to tolerate him, which only adds to the misery of Vernon's predicament and works against the laughs. This show isn't set up as a bitter or dark comedy, and yet there just seems to be too much anger. Brian should be a more successful and badly behaved ageing punk, who leads Vernon astray and enables his bad behaviour. That way, we would still pity Vernon, but for his stupidity rather than his loneliness.

3. If there are going to be immature domestic battles - take them to the extreme. Edmonson knows how to do this - remember The Young Ones and Bottom. I think extreme and cruel pranks ditched out evenly between the characters, with them ganging up to play the harshest on Vernon, could be a fun part of the anarchic 'merriment' of the student house and make for great television.

All of these things were touched on, and I don't mind this programme much - but the feeling is that they really needed to 'go there'!

I thought it was poor. Not funny at all. Not sure how shows like this get made.

Well with Ade Edmonson credited as a writer and lead actor, it is pretty reliable that it will be a good show - and funny. True, it could have been a little better, and a little funnier - but I found things to like.

I've been watching this again - among several others. A second series of this would probably given them the opportunity to sort the gold from the dross and make it into a much better show. See my above recommendations.
Sadly, this might not happen as Ade is going in another direction.

Perfect. What a show!

Yes - very good! I wish they'd given the series another chance. It could have been a great bit of anarchic, slapstick mayhem if it had just let itself go a little further. It could have been another "The Young Ones".

I like your enthusiasm Todd, but TK was a muddle with too many constraints to ever be anything as good as TYO. Just four years later in today's TV climate, it would never have got past pilot stage.

This is true. But imagine what the set up could have produced without the constraints of being a 'family comedy'. It should have been allowed to drift more towards Edmonson at his best rather than "My Family".

I'm rewatching this after reading Ade's autobiography. I only saw it once on original transmission in 2008. I remembered it being awful and thinking it was cringeworthy. So it was a pleasant surprise when I watched the first two episodes how much it actually made me laugh. I think when I watched it originally I was expecting too much, the Rik and Ade style. Viewed on its own merits, its a lot funnier than any sitcom I've seen on the telly recently.

I agree

I've watched it all a couple of times now and I quite like it

The characters are pretty decent - the Chinese lad especially

It could have been a bit edgier - but ITV sitcoms always were on the tame side

It is immensely enjoyable if you don't try and compare it to his earlier stuff.The scenes with him and his mates were the best.
The family was a bit cliched and the Chinese kid well he was funny but they'd never let that fly these days sadly.