Just watched it - painfully funny. Some of the lines are so well observed, and the young girl is exceptional as ever. She gets all the best lines. Worth a watch, but it's not easy viewing.

When you say that the little girl gets all the best lines, you know she makes them up herself? It's all improvised (in the case of the kids). They don't get a script at all - I think they're just told roughly what's gonna happen, and the adults have scripts. The kids then improvise naturally to what the adults say and to the situation - partly so they don't have to learn lines and partly to make it more natural - and I think it works brilliantly!

Deb

Yes, I know - but there is a little direction, as in what they are going to talk about. You can tell it's not entirely improvised - just improvised within a framework.

Casey I love My Family too - especially because Ben is the spitting image of our dentist Rob - whose also a personal friend - and has the same personality and mannerisms too, so it makes it even funnier for us to watch.

Kat x

You can tell it's not entirely improvised - just improvised within a framework.

I don't know of any drama that's completely improvised. Only stand-up comics, up on the stage alone, can get away with that. But directors, like, for example, Mike Leigh, tell the actors what he thinks they should know, gets them to improvise then works on that improvisation so that once it's perfected the script doesn't alter.

Yeah, Darren - that was what I said!

Deb

I was a bit bored by the first epi of the new series. I didn't really feel it had a plot. Anyone else feel the same?

Deb

I can see why people like it and it's an original idea, etc, but I found it a bit irritating, to be honest.

I agree that there is that irritating middle-classness at the heart of it. But I guess you can't get away from that.

I am middle class and irritating but don't have kids, so it fulfills a need for me...

I really enjoyed epis 2 and 3 of the new series. Excellent! It was only the first I found plotless.

Deb

My favourite bit so far:

Grandma: 'A woman should have the right to be any shape she likes'
Karen: 'What about a hexagon?'

Tee hee!

I hadn't seen much of it before, so ordered series 1 and 2 from amazon.

series 1 is by far the most natural and improvised. I'm sure the kids are following a script now.

Apparently not, Sapph, unless they were all lying in the interview in the Radio Times a week or two back. The adults have a script and the kids are just told roughly what the storyline is.

However, perhaps the kids have become a bit too wise about what is wanted from them, so they're not being so natural? Ironically, it's natural we want.

Deb

<Added>

Well, the above is true for the two younger kids. The old one now gets shown a script just minutes before they film, so he remembers the gist but has no chance to memorise the actual words.

I loved Karen at the tennis court, last week.

Yeah, that was brill, Jem! Loved it!