It may be the comedy that the critics hate, but the public love it. My Family was the most watched sitcom of 2008, with audiences of around eight million. And now the tooth-rottingly sweet misadventures of the dentist Ben Harper (Robert Lindsay), his long-suffering wife Susan (Zoë Wanamaker) and their ever-demanding household is reaching a landmark, notching up a century of episodes in nine years. Only two British sitcoms have surpassed that in recent times: Birds of a Feather (102 episodes) and Last of the Summer Wine (280 and counting).
Yet its stars seem bemused. Sitting snugly together on a sofa in a Soho office Wanamaker, turning 60 imminently but looking a decade younger in trim black T-shirt, has to consult the press release to check the story, while Lindsay, also 59 and heavily tanned thanks to a recent Caribbean holiday, is not even sure if it is such a record. “What about Steptoe and Son? Dad’s Army?”
There were 57 episodes of Steptoe, 80 of Dad’s Army. Only Fools and Horses reached 64 episodes in 22 years. They certainly seem to churn out My Family, thanks partly to the innovative process — in Britain at least — of using a team of writers, set up by the American comedy guru Fred Barron, who came to the UK after cutting his teeth on Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show.
Lindsay and Wanamaker make an interesting couple. He rattles out gossip and gripes; she is more sphinx-like, choosing words carefully. They giggle and argue about events, and you could easily believe that they were a loving long-term married couple. Just like the Harpers, in fact. “This is a perfect marriage,” Lindsay chuckles, “because we get to see other people.” He is married to the dancer Rosemarie Ford, she to the actor/writer Gawn Grainger.
Lindsay is emphatic that they are nothing like the Harpers. “Punters on holiday say, ‘How’s your wife?’ and your first instinct is, ‘You watch too much television’.” Yet this is the kind of life-art confusion that normally only happens with soaps, so it is a testament to the show’s impact, as well as the pair’s obvious rapport, that viewers get confused.
Critics dismiss My Family as generic, dull and safe, yet like a Ford Mondeo it lacks sophistication but does the job. It is pure primetime, pre-watershed, no-swearing light entertainment, as Ben gets into weekly scrapes and embarrasses his art-gallery-running wife. It might lack the sassy gag ratio of Friends or the postmodern irony of Peep Show, yet it gets laughs. And Lindsay can always fall over.
The scripts, however, take some knocking into shape. After various run-ins the stars became concerned about the consistency of the writing. There were even times when they refused to perform because they were so unhappy. This was not just a one-off either, Lindsay adds.
“There is some real dross in there and we are aware of it,” he says. “We had many fights. Out of 100 episodes maybe we’ve done ten that you can say are really good shows.” Wanamaker agrees: “Out of sixteen episodes, if we can get three or four really good ones then I think we are ahead.” Top marks for candour, zero for bigging up their product. “Dross” is hardly something you put in a press release.
Wanamaker warms to the theme: “I don’t want to sound pretentious, but for an actor it is a challenge. You sometimes have to use all of your talent to make something that sticks in your craw sound OK.” Sometimes they have ditched the lines altogether and resorted to slapstick, Lindsay recalls. “There was one episode where we didn’t like the dialogue so we just had a fight in bed.”
Things did improve. “Fred Barron got me and Zoë involved in the creative process,” he says. They would sit with the writers and tell stories about their lives, which would be turned into storylines. “I remember one episode when we were in a tower block [What’s Up Docklands?]. We tried to experiment with living on our own, which is something I did when I was going through my divorce and I went back to being a bachelor in Chelsea Harbour, in what I called Divorce Alley. You had to have swipecards for everything and once I got arrested for cleaning the car with a 50ft hosepipe out of my window.”
While the scenarios might be drawn from reality, Lindsay and Wanamaker maintain that they are nothing like their characters. “Events yes, personalities no,” Lindsay says firmly. While they had never worked together before, their paths frequently crossed at the Ivy. “We are both old hippies who have got families later in life,” Lindsay says with a smile. Wanamaker is the “wicked stepmother” to Grainger’s children, while Lindsay has two pre-teenagers to go with a grown-up daughter from his 14-year relationship with Diana Weston.
Lindsay took the part in 2000 because he wanted to be based in one place for a change after a few turbulent years that included too much drinking and some therapy. “I think as you get older you have to be practical. You start with dreams, but there are other reasons why you do jobs — children, bank account, geography, a friend is in it, good script, location, all those things persuade you. One of the reasons I did it was I had been travelling so much I wanted a job that settled me down.” Wanamaker says: “I did it because it was a good script and Robert was going to do it.” Call My Family a corny sitcom, however, and he takes umbrage. Not because it is corny, but because he does not even think it is part of that genre. “It’s not a sitcom at all, just a collection of sketches. An episode is really just a series of anecdotes. I think it is also part variety show. I call our bedroom scenes ‘front cloth’ scenes, like Eric and Ernie’s bedroom scenes. Kids write in and say they’d love to be in a family like ours because we have a lot of fun. I feel like ringing them up and saying it’s because we have a lot of money. The Harpers live in a £2 million house in Chiswick. That’s not exactly Shameless, is it?” Credit crunch topicality is studiously avoided. It would spoil the precious reruns.
He probably feels like wringing critics’ necks though. It must be tough, seeing shows such as Extras, which Lindsay adored (and in which he had a cameo with a brilliantly self-mocking turn), or The Thick of It, which Wanamaker loves, get the plaudits while they have to make do with massive ratings. “It’s just snobbery,” Wanamaker says. “If we wanted those reviews we wouldn’t be in My Family. The public own it now and the press can’t bear it.” While they both enjoy the more knowing sitcoms that crop up on BBC Two and Channel 4, they are more than happy to be populist.
Initially Lindsay was hurt by the sniffy notices, but not any more. Because he no longer reads them. “You know they are going to be nasty.” Instead he seems to have created a kind of protective us-against-the-world carapace that echoes the old Millwall FC chant: “No one likes us, we don’t care”. Except in this case it is: “No critic likes us, we don’t care”.
There have been fond memories. Lindsay suddenly turns to Wanamaker mid-interview and says: “Do you remember when I went to that strip club and shagged you senseless afterwards?” I momentarily thought The Times had a scoop, but this turns out to have been a storyline (presumably not one based on real life). A more sedate memory for Lindsay is the royal set visit. “The Queen was opening a new gate at Pinewood and we had to meet her. She was a bit nonplussed and wandered into the bedroom and asked us why there were seats there. I said, ‘Yes, Ma’am, that’s where the audience sits.’ ‘You have an audience that watch you? Oh, I see . . .’ ”
The Queen is not the only person who has been in their bedroom, but at least she was polite, Lindsay says. “Alan Yentob was making a documentary about comedy and appeared in our bed. We thought it would put us up a notch, then the next thing we knew he proceeds to call our show ‘the dinosaur of situation comedy’. Even he was slagging it off.”
Lindsay is no Clarksonesque grump, but plenty gets his goat. “Please don’t get us on to BBC scheduling. That seriously pisses us off. I got off the plane on Monday and a security guard came up to me and said, ‘Why do you keep moving your programme?’ ” They seem to be victims of their own success, with the BBC scheduling them to defeat the opposition. Thank goodness their devoted following can find them. Except, it seems, for those who work in airport security.
My Family looks set to continue, although neither star can see them getting close to Last of the Summer Wine. Still, I suspect Lindsay would rather enjoy rolling down a hill in a bath. They are adamant that it would be curtains if one left. “It wouldn’t be My Family,” Wanamaker says. “When it stops being fun we will stop.”
“As far as Zoë and I are concerned, we will do a tenth series of 16 episodes, which the BBC will probably split into a tenth and eleventh series, then that will be it,” Lindsay says. And without them it cannot go on. Or, he wonders, can it? “Both of us have done long runs in something onstage, then someone else has taken over and the show is still a hit. You get really pissed off, thinking, ‘How come they are as good as me?’ ” Maybe Ben might succumb to a horrible dentistry-related workplace accident and Susan might remarry? No. They are a package.
They hint that the next series might have some twists. Lindsay claims that they’d like to do a late-night adult version but I suspect he is joking. After that they are going to take some serious persuading. There are simply too many other commitments. Wanamaker has a regular role in Poirot and is also currently shooting the romantic comedy/horror spoof It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, written and directed by Gurinder (Bend It Like Beckham) Chadha. Lindsay is hoping to star in Aristo, Martin Sherman’s play about Aristotle Onassis, in London, after a successful Chichester run. His autobiography, Letting Go, is out in the autumn, though it is no kiss and tell. “If it was it would be a much bigger book,” he says.
As far as both are concerned, sitcom is simply an incredibly hard genre to get right all the time so they have to live with the brickbats. “I was offered Private Lives the other day,” Lindsay says. “That’s genius. Guys and Dolls is genius. Shakespeare works totally. I don’t care how much Mr Gervais hones his scripts, even The Office wasn’t all perfect.”
The 100th episode of My Family is on BBC One on Thursday at 8pm
