Welcome To Royle Britannia
The Age
Thursday August 31, 2000
THE ashtray overflows with butts and the air reeks of cigarette smoke. The stench mingles with the greasy aftermath of the evening tea, chops and chips. If the sour smell seems palpable, the room is hardly a spirit-lifting sight, either. A shabby couch and a pair of armchairs are arranged around a telly that takes pride of place, its incessantly flickering blue light revealing a sorry parade of raucous game shows, vapid sitcoms such as Birds of a Feather, and reruns of '70s American crime shows such as Ironside.
Welcome to the grubby, claustrophobic world of the Royles, a working-class Manchester family that has taken Britain by storm without moving beyond the fictional walls of their dreary council house. Written by Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash - who both appear in the show - and Henry Normal, The Royle Family has, in two, six-episode seasons, won millions of viewers and a handful of awards, including BAFTAs this year for Best Situation Comedy and Best Comedy Performance for Aherne.
It's been hailed as the most successful BBC2 comedy since Absolutely Fabulous and, predictably, the Yanks are making overtures about an American version (where it's hard to imagine anyone chain-smoking or commenting loudly about the pong they've left in the loo).
Supremely grotty and defiantly plot-free, the show revolves around the family as they sit around, watching TV, smoking, drinking tea and engaging in the incessant squabbling that passes for communication in the Royle family. Conversation runs the gamut from banal to bickering.
Shot in real time - no snappy, three-act structure here - and without a laugh track, the show is being hailed as the new, naturalistic face of British comedy, in the tradition of the films of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, but funnier. Certainly, its slow-burning humor creeps up, guerrilla-style.
On introduction to the Royles, one's impulse might be to flee to the relative safety and hygiene of The Simpsons: certainly, the squeaky clean Friends, or even Drew Carey and his pals,would break out in hives if they had to spend any time with these geezers.
Dad Jim, played by the brilliant Ricky Tomlinson (Dockers, Raining Stones, Riff Raff), is a foul-mouthed slob who hates to part with a penny and is vaguely content in his chair, from where he retains control of the remote. Mam Barbara (Sue Johnston) is a faded chain-smoker who thinks that one day she might vary the family diet to include corned beef hash, and in the first episode is gearing up for her new part-time job at the local bakery. By episode two it becomes clear that Barb's idea of conversation is to observe that the bloke from the flats stopped in for a sliced loaf, and then to be affronted when her cranky hubby abuses her for being so bloody boring.
Daughter Denise (Aherne) is preparing to marry mobile disco operator Dave (Cash) and spends her time buying clothes from catalogues, smoking, and telling us things we didn't need to know about the skid marks on Dave's underpants. Sullen teenager Antony (Ralf Little) completes the family unit: he seems to exist only to be heckled into making everyone else cups of tea and to be dispatched to the off-licence when someone needs a fresh supply of smokes.
There's a proud tradition of blue-collar comedies on both sides of the Atlantic. The British have given the world Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part and more recently, Common As Muck. The Americans have contributed The Honeymooners, adapted Till Death Us Do Part into All in the Family, and then produced Roseanne, Grace Under Fire and Married . . . With Children. But rarely has a comedy been as defiantly grungy as this one and never has it seemed so sedentary and enclosed.
Archie Bunker had his liberal-minded son-in-law off whom to bounce his bigoted views; Roseanne had a smart daughter in Darlene, whose sights stretched beyond the mall. But there are no points of contrast in the Royle universe: no toffy-nosed neighbors waltzing in to stir things up, no elder sons returning from university with fancy ideas.
And this council house in Manchester seems a long way from the Cool Britannia images that filter through elsewhere on British TV. Jamie Oliver's cute little box of fresh herbs, perched beyond the kitchen window in his London bachelor pad, would choke from smoke inhalation. Delia would just die in a kitchen where the indispensable utensil is a chip pan, and the lusty young professionals of This Life or their older equivalents in Cold Feet would run screaming to the pub if they were forced to banter with this mob.
But as with Seinfeld, another comedy that purported to be about nothing, there's a whole lot going on in the series' dissection of the minutiae of daily life. The interactions of the Royles suggest a lot about class, family life and modern values. The caustic scripts are keenly observed and unfurl at a deceptively leisurely pace. The cast makes the performances look effortless, bringing the stale space to life.
Things to look forward to in the next 12 episodes: a visit from Nana, a wedding, a birth and later, unnervingly, the view beyond the couch and dining table to the Royles' bathroom. Uh-oh.
The Royle Family premieres on Friday on the ABC at 8pm.
© 2000 The Age