It's lasted 11 long years, 120 episodes and withstood widespread sneering. Now the Harper family bid farewell with the last ever episode of the sitcom that viewers loved but critics loathed. Susan (Zoë Wanamaker) and Janey (Daniela Denby-Ashe) attend an eventful hen party, while disgruntled dentist Ben (Robert Lindsay) is babysitting at home - as ever, with supposedly hilarious consequences. It's time for the curtain to fall: the show's always been impeccably performed, but the writing deteriorated in recent years and ratings have fallen from a peak of 11m to around 4m.

Robert Lindsay: 'We're very proud of My Family'

After 11 years playing grumpy Ben Harper, Robert Lindsay looks to the last ever episode of My Family...

My Family replacement is show about two gay men

Axed BBC1 sitcom My Family is set to be replaced with a show about two middle-aged gay men - with Robert Lindsay back in a lead role.

Love it or loathe it, you can't help feeling a little sad about the impending loss of this dated yet strangely comforting sitcom, which has lasted for 11 series. Tonight Michael and Janey treat their parents, Ben and Susan (Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker), to a Spanish holiday for their wedding anniversary. But, as you'd expect with the Harpers, nothing is as straightforward as it seems.

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Susan is thrilled. Ben is away at a conference. All week.

But while that's good news for her and her sanity, it's bad news for us.

The comedy presence of Robert Lindsay is greatly missed. It's like expecting people to watch an episode of Outnumbered without any of the kids.

On paper, tonight's action sounds good - Susan gets accused of sexual harassment after she spurns a colleague's advances, while Michael confronts his former teacher who hated him and is now picking on Kenzo.

But the comedy is lacking; if this episode had been the pilot, the TV stalwart wouldn't have lasted five seconds, let alone 11 series.

There are some bright, hidden moments though.

Robert Lindsay had a point when he said the BBC was wrong to put on My Family after the watershed.

The BBC has said that now all the kids have left home it's time to make room for new comedy.

But in an earlier child-friendly tea-time slot, this could have limped on quite happily for another couple of decades with Ben and Susan fostering a new selection of amusing stage-school kids every year to fill their empty nest.

Alternatively, you could have shoved it into the schedule at 11 and it could have been the next Roger and Val Have Just Got In.

A married couple who loathe each other marooned together - neither of them wanting to leave their big house in Chiswick - and hoping the other one will die first. It would have been a bit like The Shining.

This week Ben is offered a fabulous promotion and Susan gets a sniff at a new career as a children's television presenter co-­starring alongside a chimp. But she's got competition.

The 11th and final series of the long-running sitcom starring Zoë Wanamaker and Robert Lindsay reaches its third episode. It's been around longer than cholera, and some might say it's about as funny, but that would be excessively harsh: it's a no-nonsense old-fashioned situation comedy, live studio audience and all, and Wanamaker and Lindsay bring a certain class to the script even when the lines themselves are a little hackneyed. It's certainly a cut above Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Plus, it doesn't have that unbearable buffoon from the BT adverts any more, which is a definite bonus. This week Ben gets all Bob Crow and forms a union at work, while Susan auditions to become a children's TV presenter.

It's the final series of My Family, which is being retired by the BBC after 11 years. So perhaps now is not the time to marvel at how this strange, pantomime sitcom has managed to last for so long. The deeply resistible Harper household squirm, mug and double-take their way through an opening episode that sees brat-daughter Janey the subject of three marriage proposals from comedy half-wit men. As the gags fall like dead birds in a nuclear winter, stridently stupid paterfamilias Ben Harper (Robert Lindsay) and his wife, Susan (Zoë Wanamaker), each choose their perfect suitor for Janey. It is a very long half hour.