Chris Hallam on the axing of My Family

Zoe Wanamaker complains that the My Family was axed last year because, she was told, ‘the BBC didn't want to have any more middle-class sitcoms’.

But little about this explanation makes sense. True, it did focus on a middle-class family. But My Family was never alone in this. The same is true of Outnumbered and – as Wanamaker acknowledges –Miranda. If anything, Miranda Hart is, if anything, closer to the upper than the working class.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Most of us would recoil at the notion that our broadcasters should be pursuing comedy series based primarily on their perceived social status anyway. The idea that the BBC should be pursuing working class talent at the expense of middle class talent is ridiculous. Were it pursuing middle class talent at the deliberate expense of working class talent, that would be absurd too. Comedy is funny or it isn’t. Class shouldn’t come into it.

Class is irrelevant to comedy then? Well, no. In sitcoms, it has often played a vital part. Steptoe and Son would not have been the same, without Harold’s inverted snobbery towards his father and his own working-class origins. Captain Mainwaring was perpetually resentful about the superior social background of his inferior officer, Wilson. Basil Fawlty was a snob. Derek Trotter openly aspired to be a yuppie.

An element of class friction is evident in many comedies today, not just sitcoms, but in the panel show sparring between Ian Hislop and Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You or David Mitchell and Lee Mack on Would I Lie To You?

Mack even plays an out-of-place working class Northerner in a middle-class environment in Not Going Out. David Mitchell, of course, also rose to attention in Peep Show where his character’s stuffy middle-class sensibilities often came into conflict with those of his workshy (although also middle-class) flatmate Jez.

However, my main issue here is that if the BBC is pursuing a fanatical pro-working class agenda, why is there no evidence for it at all? The only true working class comedies I can think of from recent years are The Royle Family which is no longer on and Shameless, which is not on the BBC. Both of partly condescend their subjects anyway.

The BBC actually seems to have a good mix of middle class and working class comedy talent. This is good and no social engineering is necessary. Or, in reality, likely to occur.

For while I don’t doubt Zoe Wanamaker’s word, I don’t believe for a moment whoever told her that My Family was cancelled because it was ‘too middle class’.

It’s easy to be snooty about My Family but it did attract good ratings (ten million at its peak) and had a very good run. It had more than 100 episodes, over 11 series and was one of the longest running British sitcoms.

Yet if ever a sitcom had had its day, this was it. My Family was never a critical success but even Lindsay and yes, Wanamaker herself, attacked the quality of the scripts during later series. It was blandness personified by the end of its run and there is a strong case for saying it should have ended when ‘teenage’ son Kris Marshall left in 2005.

Wanamaker should take pride in the fact that she appeared in such a long-running and successful sitcom. Just as Richard Briers will always be first and foremost Tom Good to many and Prunella Scales, Sybil Fawlty, in a distinguished career Zoe Wanamaker may yet end up being remembered more for her role as Susan Harper than anything else.

But whoever told her My Family was being cancelled because it was too middle class was fobbing her off. My Family had had its day. Class had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Published: 14 May 2012