Tom Basden captures perfectly the bickering and the begrudging tolerance of family life
It’s been a fallow decade or so for the mainstream family sitcom – the raucous, panto-like Mrs Brown’s Boys is very a poor substitute for The Royle Family and we’ve had no full series of Gavin and Stacey. There was a family at the heart of Not Going Out, although the children were only ever little more than props in Lee Mack’s relentlessly punning TV comedy. So, a big welcome back to Here We Go – the best intergenerational sitcom since Jim Royle last picked his nose whilst wielding the TV remote.
Created and written by Tom Basden (currently also playing Diane Morgan’s long-suffering benefits adviser in BBC Two’s Mandy), Here We Go follows the Jessops – an extended suburban family from Bedford. Dad Paul (Jim Howick) is a lowly police officer with some of David Brent’s unmerited self-importance; mum Rachel (Katherine Parkinson) is manically trying to hold everything together; sardonic daughter Amy (Freya Parks) supposedly lives with her girlfriend but rarely seems to be out of the family kitchen; and Paul’s mum Sue (Alison Steadman, exchanging Pam Shipman’s Essex accent for her native Liverpool one) is the out-of-touch Boomer.
Yes, these are all tropes (are we ever going to get a competent sitcom dad or hip oldie?), but the writing is sharp enough to give them all fresh legs.
Jude Morgan-Collie has the least fulfilling role as the rarely glimpsed film-student son Sam, who’s recording the whole shebang with his video camera. As a gimmick, this makes Here We Go no different from mockumentaries like The Office and Modern Family, with characters addressing the camera with witty rejoinders or, more often, an expressive glance.
But while the technique has grown tired and formulaic elsewhere (witness BBC One’s imported US hospital mockumentary St Denis Medical), it feels more natural here because Sam is part of the family. His supposed footage is also snappily edited so no joke outstays its welcome.
Like Not Going Out, each episode is a well-worked farce – although unlike Mack’s increasingly laboured and theatrical plots, these storylines are more rooted in recognisable everyday life. Episode one sees Paul and Rachel being given a wedding anniversary present of a trip to an escape room (“That’s what a marriage is… one big escape room with everyone looking for a way out,” Amy cynically remarks). In the event, the Jessops can’t even escape their own house after Sue locks them in; she’s taken the fobs to the home’s newly installed smart locks with her while she goes shopping.
Those are the bare bones to a busy storyline that also involves Amy building a huge model of the Eiffel Tower on the kitchen table, and Rachel and Paul giving each other identical anniversary presents that are then stolen in front of their eyes. They can’t get out of the house to confront the thieves, and there would be no point phoning the police. “We don’t catch burglars anymore – it’s not the 1950s,” Paul remarks.
Meanwhile, Rachel’s brother Robin and his heavily pregnant partner Cherry (Basden and Tori Allen-Martin) give the couple a home hub, a sort of Bulgarian Alexa – a seemingly throwaway plot point that comes back to play a pivotal role in finally releasing them from the house (always listening, it has recorded where Sue said she’d left a spare fob).
This is all very clever, but what really makes Here We Go is the relatable family dynamics, with its bickering and the begrudging tolerance of very different personalities. I suspect that this sitcom will never be as beloved as The Royle Family or Gavin and Stacey, but it’s fast, funny – and easily the next best thing.
‘Here We Go‘ continues next Friday at 9pm and is streaming on BBC iPlayer
