The truth about 'The Royle Family'

As the show celebrates 25 years, I see how the first ever episode holds up today.

The truth about everything* is different every week! This week, it’s the turn of EJECTOR SEAT, where I watch the pilot episode of a TV show old or new, and ask myself (literally) whether it’s worth carrying on (based on what I’ve seen in this episode only).

I’m guessing there’s a reason we’re covering this one. Or have you run out of ideas.

It’s 25 years this week since The Royle Family’s first broadcast. It’s one of my favourite shows ever, a proper trailblazer, and I wanted to go back to where it all began.

‘One of my favourite shows ever.’ Shot your load early there, haven’t you darling? Shouldn’t we pretend there’s jeopardy here? Regardless, let’s crack on. What was so special about The Royle Family?

The late, extremely great Caroline Aherne was 90s comedy royalty – pun semi-intended – after breaking through in The Fast Show and her own The Mrs Merton Show (which would spawn a spin-off Mrs Merton and Malcolm, perhaps loved only by me, as it lasted just one series). The show also reunited one of soap’s most celebrated married couples – Bobby and Sheila Grant from hard-hitting Scouse soap Brookside, aka Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston. There was no studio audience, and it played out in real time. Just half an hour in the life of a (fairly) normal family on a northern estate.

That doesn’t sound particularly groundbreaking.

Now, no, maybe not. But then, it was a definite gear change. The BBC was, according to a terrific oral history of the show from last Saturday’s Guardian, pretty nervous. During that half an hour, we would be with the family no matter what happened, which sometimes was… nothing.

Nothing? Zero?

Yep, pretty often, the family wouldn’t be speaking, they’d be watching TV. All we’d hear was the muffled dialogue of whatever was piping out of their battered telly.

Sounds like Gogglebox.

Indeed it does, The Royle Family was one of the inspirations for the show, with Caroline Aherne narrating early series, succeeded by costar Craig Cash after she died.

So, the pilot, the family, where do we begin?

We start where most of the ‘action’ is set, in the Royles’ living room. The very first shot is an overflowing ashtray and, beyond it, a foot, in the middle of having its toenails painted. Dad Jim (Tomlinson), is kvetching about an expensive phone bill, while nail-painting daughter Denise (Aherne) reminds him how tight he is. Slightly ditsy mum Barbara (Johnston) plays peacekeeper.

Sounds riveting.

Whatever. It’s exceptional character work, everyone’s roles established in a couple of minutes. We’re clued into the family’s social class, their dynamic, and the arc of the entire series – Denise’s impending wedding to hapless Dave – pretty quickly, and artfully. Whenever a show clumsily spills out its plot in awkward conversations between characters, my boyfriend and I always say, “Basil Exposition must’ve been script editor on this one”*. No need to say it here.

A conversation about nothing while a TV burbles in the background doesn’t exactly sound thrilling; it sounds like an average Tuesday night round my nan’s.

Exactly. The characters talk as people would in real life, but these basic conversations come alive in the delivery. This being the first episode, however, we’re introduced to a new character every few minutes to keep us interested – possibly more happens in this episode than any other. First, sullen teenager Antony, Ralf Little in his breakout role, appears, completing the family unit. Like most teens or youngest children he’s the family’s chief tea maker, front door and telephone answerer (fun fact: I was not allowed to answer the phone if my mum was in), and errand boy, and he’s very resentful about it.

Okay, this does feel real. Adults totally con you into thinking that learning to use the kettle and being entrusted to make tea is a privilege, a milestone, don’t they. In fact it’s the start of years of servitude.

Yep. I can’t even look at a jar of Mellow Birds now. Then we get scatty but warm next-door neighbour Mary, played by legendary Irish actor Doreen Keogh, and her daughter Cheryl, Jessica Hynes in a very early role, looking uncharacteristically dowdy and playing, shall we say, less intelligent and articulate than usual. There’s a brilliant scene where Denise and Cheryl flick through the catalogue in the kitchen and Antony comes through to make tea and, considering himself above Cheryl in the pecking order, is very rude to both women, inspiring Denise to quip “Keep [your nose] out, keep [your mouth] shut, or you’ll get [your eyes] blacked”. It’s a style of deadpan that feels, dare I say, uniquely northern.

Why does Antony think he’s above Cheryl in the pecking order?

Because she’s large. It’s one area where the show ages badly. One of the laziest gags – Cheryl overeats because she’s sad and lonely – it does stick out today, but in the early episodes at least, Denise calls out the men for their jibes over Cheryl’s weight, while the women are positive when encouraging of Cheryl’s dieting endeavours. It’s played for laughs, but there’s never any question that the men are behaving like massive pricks, and, sad to say, conversations like this are probably happening in households even today. (There are similar running jokes about Dave’s father’s supposed mobility issues and even Antony’s sexuality but they’re usually called out in some way or another.)

Next is Dave, Denise’s fiancé, removal man by day, mobile DJ at night. He joins Cheryl and Denise in the kitchen for a terrific scene where none of them is the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree but they spark off each other well.

Aren’t Dave and Denise quite dim for much of the show? How do the pilot’s versions of the characters match up?

Dave and Denise are actually quite smart and articulate in this episode – and most of the first series. The decision to dumb them down for subsequent series is perhaps a product of the change of the writing team – Henry Normal co-wrote this first series with Cash and Aherne but was gone by series 2 – or a result of the move from BBC 2 to BBC 1. Perhaps egos demanded fewer smart-arsed characters on the couch. Either way, I miss these versions. (Patsy and Edina in Absolutely Fabulous suffered a similar fate.) Obviously I support the vision of the show’s creators, and perhaps there’s more comedy in being daft and oblivious than sharp and catty, but every rewatch is haunted by the characters they would eventually become. Dave in series 2 is a huge change, especially – he can barely string a sentence together in the first half. Perhaps this is the writers’ telling us marriage is destroying Dave and Denise’s neurons?

Any more cast members to arrive?

Finally, we meet Twiggy, played by Geoffrey Hughes, better known now for playing slobbish Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances but was also a former Corrie regular. (The casting is incredible on this show, everyone note-perfect.) Twiggy is a familiar sight to many who grew up in similar circumstances to the Royles, the friendly neighbourhood trader, specialising in whatever’s just fallen off any lorry he happened to be passing, selling dodgy denim and shampoo in unfamiliar packaging. As a picky and bratty teenager, I turned my nose up at knockoffs mostly, though I did wear a fake Gio Goi sweatshirt throughout sixth form, purchased for £3 from the car boot at Gisburn. Sounds like Twiggy’s son, to whom he has limited access, is similarly affected. “He’s a fussy bleeder,” complains Twiggy as he sells Jim some hooky jeans. “It’s got to be Nike this and Levi that, he won’t touch any of this shite.”

Seriously is something going to happen soon?

Yes, they’re about to watch TFI Friday, remember that?

I’d bleached it from of my memory.

The ultimate in late 90s aspirational lad mag culture, Chris Evans’ talk show had Gen X in a chokehold. As Jim, a generation up and feeling left behind and furious, rails about the guests’ cosmetic surgery, Denise reminds her dad that Evans is a millionaire, in that enthralled, admiring way people with sod all money often do. It’s slightly reminiscent of the simps on social media, defending the numerous evil overlords who blight our lives, on the off chance they too, one day, will have enough money and power to force everyone else to listen to them.

The Royle Family preferred character interactions to set pieces or physical comedy, didn't it? You had to believe in this family. The dialogue is all you have. How do they manage it?

The keen ear of the writers, I guess. It’s all recognisable, perhaps especially to me as I grew up in the north in social housing, but I reckon it’s universal. Every community has their own particular emotional patois.
I especially love Antony being sent to the shop and asking if he can buy himself ten cigs as payment and being told, with a straight face by his chain-smoking mother:. “You’re not old enough to smoke until you can afford to buy your own.”
Kudos too to Dave massaging Denise’s feet and Barbara complaining that Jim never does the same for her.
“Them bloody trotters?” he cries as Barbara heaves her feet onto the coffee table for inspection. “I’d need asbestos gloves and a gas mask.”

Do they like each other?

Yes. While my family weren’t as, shall we say, rough around the edges as the Royles, this was the first time I’d ever seen this kind of brutal yet affectionate dialogue reflected so perfectly on screen, save for the adaptations of Sue Townsend’s incredible Adrian Mole. When I was 14, I had to write a script for a play about a family going on holiday, and I created a family unit not unlike the Royles, actually, and sent them to Blackpool. My Year 9 English teacher, who was also the headteacher of the school, praised it, but knocked me down to an A- because of the viciousness of  the dialogue, especially between the siblings. She simply couldn't believe a close family would speak to each other like that. She lived in a big house; I suppose when you’ve got other rooms to escape to when a family member is getting on your nerves, you don’t develop this kind of blunt, grinding interaction style that is the soundtrack to so many families I knew growing up. This turned out to be a common theme of stuff I wrote at school – middle-class teachers couldn’t get their heads round any of it. Lucky them, I suppose. But also unlucky.

The set also makes it feel pretty real, doesn’t it?

Yep, I knew houses like that when I was younger. The set is absolutely perfect. No clear surfaces. Stained wallpaper. Knickers and socks hanging on a clothes airer in the dining room. Cupboards full of all sorts of shite. Washing up everywhere. Ashtrays overflowing and, better still, nursed on laps like cherished chihuahuas. (My mother will never read this, but if she did she would want me to point out that my own childhood home was always spotless and she used to do the washing up before she even sat down to eat.)

Okay, so it’s the pilot. Any flashbacks? Dream sequences? Surprise cameos?

Nope. Although we do have the promise of one in the shape of a phone call from Barbara’s mother Norma. She will, in episode 3, be introduced properly, played by character actress Liz Smith, and steal the entire episode. It also gives us a terrific joke:

“We’re up to our eyes in it here,” says Barbara, as the entire family sit, catatonic. “Can’t seem to get nothing done. It’s all go.”

Okay, it’s a sitcom, so how about the tradition of an unseen character who looms large?

In series 1, that is Beverley Macca, from the Co-Op. Dave will be DJing at her 18th birthday that night, and it seems she has a reputation. This gives Denise her best line in the episode, amid fierce competition.

Denise: “She’s a right slapper, her.”

Barbara: “I feel a bit sorry for her, with them two kids, she’s had it hard.”

Denise: “She likes it hard, that’s her trouble.”

That sounds very unkind and unsisterly.

It is! It’s a first glimpse of Denise’s prejudices and insecurities when she has, for much of this episode, had the upper hand with pretty much everybody – but Beverley Macca, 18, and presumably very attractive, exposes a chink in her armour for the first time.

Most impressive scene?

The scene between Cheryl and Denise, in the kitchen with the catalogue, is warm and hilarious, and makes you fall in love with them both.

Any standout performances?

They’re all brilliant in their own way, and while Jim is the focal point, Denise owns this episode. Caroline Aherne is magnetic. I still can’t really believe she’s dead.

Dare I ask then? It’s 1998. The credits have rolled. The ejector seat button awaits. You pushing it and exiting via the sunroof? Or are you staying put?

Aside from the references to weight, mobility and sexuality – which, as I say, are usually confronted in the script and only ever mentioned by men, who seldom dominate any scene – the first series is perfect. The next two series are still great, despite the tendency to slip into parody, puzzling characterisation and some very annoying habits – repetition, Cash and Aherne's favoured mechanism, is overused. The final two episodes of the original run (a christening, guest starring Sally Lindsay and a Christmas special where Antony’s girlfriends parents drop in) are both brilliant. Then maybe stop there. But if you need more, of the comeback specials, the Queen of Sheba, and the very final episode, Barbara’s Old Ring, are the best.

Is there anything like it on TV today?

The similarly lo-fi Two Doors Down, set in Scotland and created by the incredibly talented Simon Carlyle, who died over the summer, and Gregor Sharp, is its nearest equivalent. I’ve yet to write anything set in the north, too nervous maybe about creating something so close to home, but more likely because The Royle Family is too perfect.

Marks out of ten?

I don’t do scores! But if I did…

OMG.

Just kidding.

Tease.

The Royle Family is available to stream on iPlayer and is on Gold pretty much every sodding night. All photos ITV Studios/BBC.

*Basil Exposition is a character in the Austin Powers movies who drives the plot forward by… well, I’m sure you can guess.

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