Caroline Ahern and Ricky Tomlinson in the Royle family
Note. The material first aired in September 2018 and has been re-released to coincide with BBC One's tribute to Caroline Ahern from 9pm on Christmas Day.
“Sitcom my ass!” This is probably what Jim Royle would yell on TV if he saw his own sitcom. According to concepts, this is ordinary: drinking tea, smoking cigarettes and chatting in front of the TV. No falling through the bars. No fun walks and not to mention war. No racing down the hill in the bathtub.
Flipping the camera back to the audience would be one of the greatest innovations of the British sitcom. The Royle Family, which first aired 20 years ago this week, has won critical acclaim and more than 20 awards. But at the heart of The Royle Family is a lovingly drawn portrait of working-class family life.
Created by Caroline Ahern and Craig Cash, it is told from the perspective of an authentic working class voice. Never mocking or patronizing, it is lovingly observed down to the smallest detail: life is lived to a soundtrack of television themes; the conversation is mostly bickering (“There are too many donkeys in this house!”); and there's always a stack of bread and butter to mop up the remains of the Sunday roast.
Ahern and Cash first worked together at Stockport pirate radio station KFM. Co-writing Ahern's stand-up act and later The Fast Show (in which Ahern also appeared – “Scorchio!”), the duo found their greatest success with Ahern's old interviewer, Mrs. Merton. Dressed in a wig and glasses, she gave her celebrity guests what was described as a “warm and gentle kick” with her deliberately naive questions.
The 1990s were a time when comedy subverted traditional television forms: The Fast Show, The League of Gentlemen, Lee and Herring, The Day Today, Alan Partridge and Vic and Bob. But just as Mrs. Merton was the antithesis of the brash, catchphrase-spewing comedy guys, The Royle Family was a gentler, more homely vehicle for pushing boundaries.
“What we wanted to do wasn't the typical jokes,” Ahern said in Gold's 2010 documentary Behind the Couch. “So comedy was more about personality and character. I just thought it was a half-hour clip of this family.”
“This was a project that Caroline and Craig desperately wanted to do,” says Andy Harris, the show’s original executive producer and then head of comedy at Granada. “They asked me to meet with them and they gave me a formal presentation of the script. They gave me the cast list—which was basically final—and I said, “Great, have they agreed to do it?” Caroline replied: “No, but will they cope… of course they will!” /p>
Ricky Tomlinson, who eventually played the family's wheelchair-bound and ailing father Jim, recalls in his autobiography that he first met Ahern at an awards ceremony. “You know, you're going to be my father,” she told him.
“I attribute the whole incident to too much champagne,” Tomlinson wrote.
The cast will reunite Tomlinson with his ex-Brookside wife Sue Johnston, who now plays doting mother Barbara. Ahern and Cash were cast as idle daughter Denise and her bumbling DJ boyfriend Dave, alongside Liz Smith as Nana and 17-year-old Ralph Little as younger brother Anthony.
Aherne and Cash sent Andy Harris. agree on a “blind pilot”. Ahern played hardball: if the BBC wanted another series about Mrs Merton – and it did – it would have to commission her new show.
Sue Johnston and Caroline Ahern in The Royle Family Photo: Pennsylvania
BBC executives insisted on reading the script and were baffled. There was no plot, no climax, and no long deliberate pauses between dialogue. The action took place almost entirely in the Royles' living room, and Ahern's character was not likable enough.
“Caroline didn't want it to be a traditional sitcom that plays live in front of an audience and has laughs,” says Harris. “She was heavily influenced by Ken Loach and the social realist films of the 1980s. She wanted to capture working-class life as it was, through real performances and in real time.
“The BBC were very unhappy about the lack of a laugh track. They couldn't figure out how it would work. We were constantly told that it would be a disaster.”
The pilot was filmed in a television studio, but it felt and looked different. “We recorded about five minutes and I just knew it wasn’t right,” Harris says. “When we broke for lunch, I said to Caroline and Craig, 'Watch the first five minutes and tell me if this is what you're looking for.' They watched it and Caroline just looked at the floor and said, “No, this is wrong.” .'
“It should have been shot on film, not on film. There was a lot more depth to the film. You needed long lenses, the right set and the right lighting. We didn't want it to feel like a sitcom. We finished recording the pilot, but it was never shown or seen. We quickly reshot the pilot and shot the entire first series on one camera in a small studio in Stockport.”
This was a major departure from the traditional three-camera setup of studio sitcoms at the time.
The first episode aired on BBC Two on Monday 14 September 1998. She immediately became popular, which increased the audience. from 3.6 to 4.9 million between the first and last episodes.
The Royle Family cast Photo: Matt Squires
This comes just two years after the Trotters walked off into the sunset in the final (or so we thought) episode of Only Fools & Horses, the Royle family quickly filled the vacant seat of Britain's favorite national treasure sitcom.
It appeared on BBC One in the second series in 1999 while Denise was pregnant. 2000 saw the release of the third and final series, directed by Ahern herself, and now featuring Baby David, styled as a late-1990s Beckham and left to play with upside-down ashtrays.
The show is praised for finding the domestic rhythm of life: the awkward silence as they pack club bars in your face; trivial questions like “Did you drink tea?” (“Did we have spaghetti?” “Bolognese?” “No, hoops”); and golden punchlines that never become punchlines but flow naturally in the middle of a conversation. “Oh Jim, why can’t you just enjoy someone’s built-in closets?” Barbara snaps as Jim rants about Dale Winton's interior design.
But it's also the rhythms of the characters – a perfect combination of writing and acting. Jim is full of dad jokes and wry indignation about the immersion heater, but his best jokes come when he's completely unaware of himself. “I’m not the kind of husband who goes out every evening,” he says. “Of course, I would do it if I could afford it.”
And the grumpy facade is shed during the show's very sentimental moments. The best one features him comforting Denise on the bathroom floor after her water broke in the 1999 Christmas special. (This scene was shot in just one take and had special meaning for both Ahern, because she herself could not have children, and Tomlinson, because his own daughter was born on Christmas Day.)
Sue Johnston (left) and Liz Smith as Nana
But even in his most tender moments, Jim is never far from a quality curse word. “Are you sure it wasn't just a big meal, honey?”
Barbara is the true heart of the show, wearing a denim skirt and embodying every auntie and buddy's mom you've ever met – a slave to her family, happy or surprised at everything, and afraid to open a packet of cookies in case they get eaten.
Denise is furry on the outside but is actually a real cow – too lazy and spoiled to change her baby's diaper – while Dave becomes increasingly thick-headed and saggy-faced. Nana is charmingly stupid, but at the same time cunning: she rummages through the things of her dead friend Elsie, God rest her soul. Liz Smith described her as a “selfish old bitch”.
Anthony is both the brain and dog body of the family, whom Jim bullies mercilessly and orders him every 30 seconds or so to make a beer, open the door, or bring in cookies. Ralf Little's performance is as sharp as the rest. When he introduces his girlfriend Emma (Sheridan Smith) to his family for the first time, the embarrassment etched on his face is so real it hurts.
The regular visiting characters—Jeffrey Hughes' tea-leaf Twiggy and Jessica Hines's scruffy but dense neighbor Cheryl—feel like family. But what you don't see—the places and people outside the Royles' living room—adds even more texture: Gary from the butcher shop, who always smells like mince; Dave's oft-mentioned buddy Duckers; big Julie from Argos; their local boozers The Feathers; and, of course, Denise's old love rival Beverly Macca.
Caroline Ahern and Craig Cash at the 2009 Baftas Photo: Brian Smith
It's easy to believe that much of the dialogue and character traits are taken from the writers' real families. The phrase “My ass” came from Cash's father, and series one co-writer Henry Normal's father complained about the immersion heater.
“We talk on the phone every day about what her mum has. said, said my dad or someone we saw at the store,” Cash explained on Behind the Couch. “We always find it funny to just have small conversations and things like that.”
As co-writer Phil Mealy said, Ahern and Case “had a sense of people’s weirdness.”
Ahern and Cash argued on set about everything from whether the characters should go into the kitchen to Cash. without a pen in your pocket. After the third series, Ahern left and moved to Australia. She wrote a bittersweet sitcom called Dossa and Joe, a hit with critics, but a ratings flop.
“Caroline went through a lot of problems with relationships, health and the press,” says Andy Harris. “She was creatively lost and confused… Caroline was very fragile and unprepared for the fast-paced run of show business. Her talent was extraordinary, but at the same time very valuable.”
Granada kept the Royles' living room in storage, but assumed the show was over. “Every year they would call me and ask, ‘Can we get rid of The Royle Family?’” Harris laughs. “And every year I said, 'Absolutely not!' p >Aherne returned to bring back the Royles for the 2006 Christmas special, Queen of Sheba. This will be the most heartbreaking moment in the series: Nana's death.
“In my opinion, this is the highlight of the series,” Harris says. “I think this is a colossal job. Emotional, heartfelt, touching and truthful. It was just great.”
Four more Christmas specials will follow, with the final episode, “Barbara's Old Ring”, airing in 2012. It's fair to say that these later episodes give way to more traditional sitcom formats – wackier plots and the Royles as caricatures of themselves – but that's really the nature of the series. any long-running comedy, and the need to fill 60 minutes of festive fun (even for the Royles, an hour of just sitting takes effort).
It is no exaggeration to say that The Royle Family changed British comedy. The traditional studio sitcom almost immediately felt like a relic, and shows like Phoenix Nights, Shameless, The Office or Peep Show probably never would have happened without the Royles' technical and stylistic innovations. Craig Cash and Phil Mealey's Early Doors series, which ran for two series, is the obvious successor, bringing the Royle family formula to the pub.
“It's hard to remember what an impact it had,” says Andy Harris. “It broke so many rules. Everything that Ricky Gervais has been able to do, in my opinion, is largely due to the fact that the Royle family paved the way. The office was the next step. We've become more attuned to comedy based on real life.”
It's already nostalgic – how many families' lives are dictated by terrestrial television in the age of Netflix? – and an example of how British comedy has long defined national identity, whether working class or not.
Following the death of Caroline Ahern from cancer in 2016, when she was just 52, the series has also evoked feeling of melancholy. Watch any interview with the actors and they'll immediately talk about the intimacy on set. It's heartbreaking to know that the characters, cast, crew and audience – all part of the show's extended family – will lose someone so tragically early.
“Craig and Caroline have been a fantastic partner,” says Andy Harris. . “And Caroline as a writer, creator and actress was phenomenal – an original talent and a real uniqueness. I miss her terribly.”
BBC One will air classic episodes of The Royle Family on 25 December. Caroline Ahern: Comedy Queen on BBC Two at 10:25pm
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