My Family is nothing like my family. Probably not yours either for that matter.

Advantages: Easy to watch.

Disadvantages: Easy to get bored with.

I remember reading somewhere that this represents your typical British family and that we should all get the humour and see ourselves in it somewhere. Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

My dad is not a dentist for a start. Neither am I for that matter. I am most certainly not in that wage earning bracket, in fact I am a long way off it. Now whether or not I would represent a member of the typical British family, I wouldn't like to say, but I think a family with a dentist as the head doesn't. 

It may be more typical of a family within a certain suburb of London - no doubt the suburb where comedy writers live, wherever that may be. 

Now back to the program. It is a sitcom which revolves around the ups and downs of a family, and all the little incongruencies of character between family members, which all families have, whether typical or untypical. 

Where this family-based sitcom is typical is in that the dad is the one who takes all the flak - think Jack Dee's Rick Spleen character in Lead Balloon - oddly enough his character and his wife are media types. I wonder if they lives in the same London suburb as BBC comedy writers? Also, think Al Bundy in Married with Children. These characters' characters are miles apart, but the father of the family is taking the flak, and always coming off worst. 

Ben Harper is the dentist in question in My Family. He has two sons, occasionally at odds with each other, but who come together when it involves ganging up on Dad. There is also a daughter who is at university. Her character was replaced by a niece, who is a little less intelligent. The wife always gets the better of him. 

Roger is a fellow dentist, who is 'nice but dim'. It is Roget that Ben always tries to get one over, to make him feel a little better at what he suffers from his family. 

I enjoyed My Family, when it first came around. It reminded me of comedy from the 1970s such as The Good Life, but I very quickly started to go off it - although still enjoyable to watch, it is in some places a little tired and seems to rely a little too much on that BBC 'feel' that you are supposed to be comfortable with this, because you are just like this. 

Yes, I will still enjoy an episode of this every now and again when it comes up as a repeat, but I am afraid it has got a little jaded for me and no longer fits in with more contemporary stuff.

Summary: Typically BBC family sitcom which nods back to classic 1970s BBC sitcom

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