Outnumbered: Not the run of the Mill Family sitcom

The cast of Outnumbered

The term “family comedy” has taken a beating in recent years. Its almost become a dirty phrase. Oh its not a family sitcom is it? I prefer my comedy a little more highbrow. A comedy about family life should be one of the easiest things to pull of given that we’ve all lived in families at some point. What tends to happen though is that families are painted in an unrealistic manner and every single time a new family sitcom appears it follows the same predictable and stale “comedy by numbers” format. The dad is the buffoon who is always hiding something from the wife, the wife is the concerned parent always sticking her nose in her children’s lives or she’s a high powered businesswoman who runs the house in a mad panic and the kids are either precocious little so-and-sos who know far too much for their own good or sulky teenagers who only appear on screen occasionally to tell us how embarrassing their parents are who difficult their lives are. The problem with all this though is that whilst its based on something we’re all familiar with it doesn’t ever feel like we’re watching a real family. Its not so much watching a family like those who might live next door but one which has been over exaggerated and therefore ends up resembling a family of stereotypical clowns rather than Mr. and Mrs. 2.4 Children. With the axing of BBC1’s long running joke My Family this year we are at least minus one of these banal attempts at hilarity but the BBC1’s other series to never stray to far away from the format Life of Riley appears to be returning a new series. Ah well.

You can imagine my absolute delight when one evening in 2007 (don’t ask me specifics on the evening but I believe I was wearing a black jumper) when I happened upon a brand new family comedy. Admittedly I’d missed any news on this in the listings, otherwise I’d’ve probably gone out for the evening. Entitled Outnumbered, on the surface at least appeared to be yet another attempt to use the same old format with a new cast. The truth is though Outnumbered attracted my attention almost immediately as it quickly dawned on me that whoever was behind this show had done it! They’d made a comedy that felt real, that was relatable and even more amazingly it strayed away from the plots and the pit falls that so many before it had fallen into. Unusually here the children were the stars of the show. Right from the word go Outnumbered felt real, warm and like we were watching the first truly relatable comedy family. Delving a little a bit deeper into the background of the series I discovered that the show was partly improvised which is what gave it its off the cuff and real feel. The children are told the storyline and where to go with it but not asked to memorize any lines. This was a revelation, bordering on genius because what it meant was that instead of some 40 year old writer sat in office trying to remember what kids were like what was portrayed here was something we’d never seen before in family comedy. Put simply it was genuine. The one flaw of Series one was the odd scheduling. The BBC seemed unsure where Outnumbered fit and so they strangely placed the first 3 episodes over consecutive evenings and then the last three in a further slot of consecutive evenings.



Needless to say by the end of the first series I was hooked. I’d never seen a family comedy that appeared so effortless before. The Children were so loveable and everything about it was likeable and unpretentious.

Four series in Outnumbered has gained popularity and the seat of the pants style still works as well as it did back in 2007.

On Friday night as BBC1’s My Family limped to its finish, Outnumbered returned for an impressive fifth run. As a fan of the series I looked forward to it but wondered if a show that relied on the innocence and believability of its young cast could work now that the kids are getting older.


Of course things have changed since the last run, Ben’s voice has broken, Jake has become a proper teenager and Karen’s older and wiser. These changes don’t appear (based solely on the first episode that saw the Brockman Family head to Uncle Bob’s funeral) to have had any damaging effect on the quality of or the partly improvised feel of the show. If anything it was a bit more relatable now that the children are older. Daniel Roche, Ramona Marquez and Tyger Drew-Honey are still the stars with highlights including Ben confusing a Hog roast for a cremation and Karen’s obsession that uncle Bob may not actually be dead.

The series is warm, genuine, naturally funny and lives in a world we can all relate to and that’s why it works so brilliantly. Outnumbered makes it OK to love family comedy again and for that I will enjoy it for as long as the Beeb wants me to.

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Life's Too Short: The First Trailer

The first look at the new project from Ricky Gervias and Stephen Merchant that follows the life of Showbiz Dwarf Warick Davis

The TV WEEK: Saturday 3rd - Friday 9th September 2011

Saturday
7.00pm Red or Black? ITV - Ant and Dec present a brand new TV event in which ordinary people get the chance to become millionaires. All week, contestants have the chance to spin the Red or Black? wheel and answer the simple question - red or black? Ten correct answers stand between them and a million pounds. Each day 1,000 hopefuls go from the Red or Black? Arena at Wembley to another spectacular UK location to take part in a series of challenges which will whittle their numbers down. Eight make it through to the next stage, but only two can go head-to-head in the final later in the evening with the first results show airing at 9.15pm. Continues all week with 2 shows a night.
9.45pm The Jonathan Ross Show ITV - New chat show with guests Lewis Hamilton, Sarah Jessica Parker and singer Adele.
Sunday
6.30pm Nature's Miracle Babies BBC1 - Series in which zoologist and presenter Martin Hughes-Games travels the world to discover how species on the brink of extinction are being protected by dedicated and passionate people. He starts his journey in China where, without the extraordinary advances in reproductive science, the country's most visible symbol - the giant panda - would be extinct. He also follows the stories of the pied tamarin, the tiny and tenacious monkey teetering on the edge of extinction, and the threatened one-horned Asian rhino.
8.30pm Inspector George Gently BBC1 - Return of the period crime drama centering around the discovery of the body of a missing school girl.
9.00pm World's Most Dangerous Roads BBC2 - Comedian Sue Perkins and adventurer Charley Boorman travel across Alaska to the notorious Dalton Highway - a dirt track built in the 1970s as a supply road to support the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
9.00pm Appropriate Adult ITV - 2-part drama about the intense and complex relationship between serial killer Fred West and housewife Janet Leach, whose life is dramatically changed when she is asked to act as West's 'appropriate adult' while he is in custody. Almost immediately after Janet begins working with West, he makes a shocking confession of murder - but she cannot tell the police because of her obligation of confidentiality. As West reveals more to her - while refusing to divulge information to the police - Janet feels forced to give him an ultimatum: she will leave the case unless he co-operates.
10.00pm The Grumpy Guide to Driving BBC2
Monday
8.00pm Ground Zero Mosque Channel 4 - BAFTA Award-winning director Dan Reed untangles the hysteria, fury and politics surrounding the 'Mosque at Ground Zero'. His film explores how this proposed mosque and Islamic community centre, two blocks away from the site of the 9/11 attacks in lower Manhattan, has thrown into sharp focus the tensions at the core of American democracy regarding the country's Muslim population.
8.30pm The Real Hustle BBC3 - Return of the scam series.
9.00pm How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring BBC2 - The story of how the Arab world erupted in revolution, as a new generation used the internet and social media to try to overthrow their hated leaders. In the first of this two-part series, Mishal Husain charts events in Tunisia and Egypt by meeting those who led the revolts and showing the unique footage they shot.
9.00pm 9/11: Emergency Room Channel 4 - Documentary that tells of the emergency treatment of the injured that took place in and around the World Trade Center as the jets crashed and the towers fell on the morning of 9/11. Many lost their lives in the attacks, but there were also thousands of evacuating office workers and emergency responders who were burned, crushed, impaled, lacerated, blinded and traumatised. Many had life-threatening injuries. With access to new footage and testimony from those on the ground, 9/11: Emergency Room reveals how lives were saved.
Tuesday
7.00pm Euro 2012 Qualifiers ITV
9.00pm Catch Me If You Can: Armed Robbers BBC1 -  Narrated by Philip Glenister, this is part of a series of Crimewatch specials examining how investigators stay one step ahead of the most professional and ruthless criminals.
9.00pm Adopting Abroad: Saira's Story BBC2 - First of the two documentaries that follow Saira Khan and her husband Steve on their journey to adopt a baby girl from an orphanage in Karachi, Pakistan. Concludes Thursday
9.00pm Don't Tell the Bride BBC3 - Return of the series where a groom organizes his wedding.
10.35pm The Twins of the Twin Towers BBC2 - Documentary that features the accounts of some of the 46 twins including Zachary Fletcher, a New York City Fire Fighter who lost his fellow fire fighter and twin brother Andre in the south tower; Gregory Hoffman, who was on the phone to his twin Stephen as the second plane hit; and former NYPD undercover cop Lisa DeRienzo, who lost her brother Michael. As a broker, Michael believed he was the one with the safe job. These and other compelling testimonies make for a profound and powerful tale, which strikes at the heart of what it is to be not only a twin but also a human being, and reminds us why the world can never forget the events of September 11 2001.
Wednesday
9.00pm Bin Laden: Shoot to Kill Channel 4 - The most complete story yet of the operation to find and kill Osama Bin Laden. A stellar cast of White House insiders speak on camera, including the first extraordinary documentary interview with President Barack Obama on the subject. From the anxiety-drenched minutes in the White House Situation Room to the deadly stairwells of Bin Laden's secret labyrinth, cinematic dramatisations take viewers deep inside one of the most important moments of our era, showing the US Navy Seals coming face to face with the most wanted man in history.
9.00pm Claire Richards: Slave to Food Skyliving - Former Steps star Claire Richards attempts to discover the real reason she never wins her battle with weight, as cameras gain access to her life over the course of a year.
Thursday
9.00pm 9/11: The Conspiricay Road Trip BBC3 - Andrew Maxwell, a comedian, believes in the findings of the official investigation, which claim the responsibility for the attack lies with Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He thinks the conspiracies theories are unsubstantiated nonsense. So in this film he offers to take five young Brits, who believe some of these conspiracy theories, on a road-trip from New York to Washington. They visit Ground Zero where two planes hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, home of vast American defence HQ and Shanksville in Pennsylvania where United 93 crashed.
Friday
9.30pm Would I Lie To You? BBC1 - Fifth series of the panel game fronted by Rob Brydon with team Captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack. David is joined by Rebecca Front and Jack Whitehall, and Lee is joined by Nick Hewer and Miranda Hart.
10.00pm QI BBC2 - The panel game fronted by Stephen Fry returns to its original home on BBC2 with the I series.
10.30pm Comedy Showcase: Coma Girl Channel 4 -Single-camera comedy that follows a group of female friends united by a shared history but divided by almost everything else. Most friends meet for dinner, or at the pub, but for these four old school friends their monthly get together is in the unsettling surroundings of an intensive care unit. Siobhan is a failing TV presenter, Sarah is a rather reluctant mother of three, Pip is a pseudo bohemian and Lucy, well, Lucy is in a coma. After the initial shock, the group soon realise that Lucy is in dire need of help, if only they could provide it.

American: The Bill Hicks Story

William Melvin Hicks: we miss you. Now here's Tom with the weather.

There are very few reasons why anyone would want to be older than they are but I'd gladly have a few extra wrinkles to have experienced Hicks at his best.


I was 9 years old when Bill Hicks died. I discovered him during my angry goth teen years and never, ever looked back.

BBC 4 last night screened an engaging biopic of Bill's rise, fall and rise in comedy. If there was ever a reason not to destroy BBC 4, this was one. Bill was an angry, bile-fuelled polemicist who never shied away from speaking his mind. As Dwight Slade, Bill's childhood friend, says: being a great comic is in tieing your inner and outer voices together, saying what you think and not being afraid to offend.

Bill, born in 1961, was a teenager of the post-Vietnam society. Proud to be an American, yet ashamed of his great country's failure to be responsible with its power, Bill is just as relevant today as in his heyday in the late eighties and early nineties. It's hard not to wonder what he'd make of the 'War on Terror', 24-hour rolling news, Murdoch's Fox News, Glenn Beck and the meteoric rise of Justin Bieber: "when did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children?"

Hicks had a view on everything from the evils of advertising and 'the devil's music' to dogmatic creationist types and the anti-intellectualism that still rages throughout the Western world.

This biopic, both informative and beautifully animated, didn't focus on the comedy, but the man: where did he come from and how did he get to be nominated as the 'comedian's comedian', winning worldwide accolades? We heard from both friends and family, who talked of his love affair with mind-altering substances and a struggle against alcoholism.

"I'm here to be a comic" were his first worlds to a promoter on arrival in LA at the tender age of 16. Starting out as a sober, 'clean-cut' comedian, Bill couldn't have grown to be a more different comedian as his life on the road and rejection as a script writer embittered him. Starting his quest to find his voice involved taking psychadelic mushrooms and his first taste of alcohol was 7 Margaritas, downed in quick succession.

Hicks spent a lot of his time on stage, waxing lyrical about the positive power of drugs. I felt BBC 4 was brave to involve a psychadelic montage along with Bill's stage material on the negative image that the media portray of drugs and the 'morons' who fall foul of them.

Bill's drinking and substance abuse eventually got the better of him though, reaching the point where audiences viewed his appearances on stage as an alcohol endurance test, his adrenaline inuring him to the worst effects of alcohol until he reached the stage where he lay prostrate on the floor, spouting hate-filled rants at the world and audience alike.

"I left in love, in laughter and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit."

A documentary for fans of Hicks rather than the uninitiated, the programme showed rare footage of him away from the spotlight; with his parents, his nieces and nephews and Dwight Slade and Kevin Booth, his best friends. We also saw the devastation the news that Hicks was suffering from pancreatic cancer brought. It was a poignant moment to hear Mrs. Hicks recounting the story that when Bill came home after his first bout of chemotherapy, he went out to the deck at the family home. As he was normally somewhat of an outsider amongst his nearest and dearest, Mrs. Hicks asked him if he'd prefer to be alone. "Who wants to be alone?" he asked.

For me, this documentary makes me melancholic and nostalgic for my teenage self. Listening to his posthumous albums, Rant in E-Minor and Arizona Bay, again I find myself wishing that there were more comics like him in the world today, lampooning the state of affairs and asking questions about the facile and inane, questions about our governments; questions that we're uncomfortable answering. Hicks is often seen as a jaded, dark, didactic comedian but, to me, he was a man with a beautiful message. Life - it's just a ride.

Reviewed by Tannice for thecustardtv. Follow Tannice on Twitter.