Life Of Riley

Family comedy starring Caroline Quentin and Neil Dudgeon as Maddy and Jim, a recently married couple adjusting to a life together with each other's children. Unfortunately the success of snappy sitcom Outnumbered makes these humdrum shenanigans look as outdated as they are unfunny.

More a case of Load of Rubbish than Life of Riley. This is the latest dismal family sitcom from BBC1 - even worse than the recently axed After You've Gone or the bewilderingly successful Green Green Grass, which was broadcast afterwards and seemed like a masterpiece in comparison.

It's decades in the past: an old-school Radio 2 request show is spinning a dead crooner on the radiogram and the smell of Brussels sprouts being boiled into oblivion for Sunday lunch is wafting through the kitchen. That's what Life Of Riley reminded me of: stale; safe; comforting in a lobotomised kind of way. The scary thing being that it's set (I think) in the present day.

A vehicle for Caroline Quentin's mumsy charms (Quentin being the acting equivalent of a Fiat Panda), Life Of Riley is aimed firmly at a fantasy version of suburban middle England where divorce, second marriage and the welding together of rival siblings is the cue for cutesy domestic strife rather than drug addiction and years in therapy. Which wouldn't matter if the jokes were funny - but I've had more fun scraping bubble and squeak off the frying pan.

BBC1's new domestic sitcom Life of Riley has the bad luck to begin when the triumphant second series of Outnumbered is still fresh in our minds. By noticing the fairly obvious fact that family life is funny just the way it is, Outnumbered has demonstrated that the layers of sitcom contrivance in other shows are both tired and unnecessary, and actually smother the comedy.

Here, Caroline Quentin plays Maddy Riley, whose family consists of a nine-year-old child from her previous marriage, her new husband and his two teenagers, and a baby. Maggie last night found a pregnancy-testing kit - which, despite being unopened, instantly convinced her young Katie (Lucinda Dryzek) must be pregnant. Next, husband Jim (Neil Dudgeon) found the same kit and decided Maddy must be pregnant. And so on.

Needless to say, it's much easier to sneer at a determinedly mainstream sitcom than to write one. It's also true that Life of Riley does have some nice lines, especially when simply observing family life. The trouble last night was that with all that wildly implausible plotting to be done, there just wasn't room for enough of them. Instead, we ended up spending another half-hour firmly on Planet Sitcom: that strange world where people behave not like anybody in real life, but merely like people in other sitcoms.

Review in The Independent

There's nothing overtly horrible going on here. It's just all rather dull and rather samey, and something of a waste of talent.

Life of Riley is devoid of charm, character, performance, deftness, warmth, fun, the feeling of spontaniety... all the ingredients of a good sitcom. In fact, this show is devoid of the ingredients required to make a passable CBBC show. This is a sub-standard attempt at light-entertainment.

Outnumbered is the great, definitive family sitcom, so I have no idea why anybody would bother with Life of Riley, which, apart from its nods to modern family life, could have been made 40 years ago with Wendy Craig in the Caroline Quentin role. Quentin is Maddy Riley (her name is Riley and the title of the series is Life of Riley - do you get it?), a mother who marries and finds herself head of a new brood - her husband's (Neil Dudgeon) children, her own son and a new baby. It's very broad and pantomime-y, with everyone mugging, shrugging and sighing, and it's packed with 'comic' misunderstandings and farce - Quentin even hides under a bed at one point. Life of Riley is innocuous, inoffensive and is just the kind of sitcom that will appeal to ten-year-olds who'll probably enjoy the way the family's knowing kids always get the better of their hapless parents.

The premise of this new comedy series starring Caroline Quentin as Maddy Riley, a recently married woman trying to foster a relationship with her stepchildren, is so tired it's practically slipping on its bedsocks. The funniest cast member in this opening episode is Maddy's young son Ted (Patrick Nolan), who's trying to impress a girl he likes by stealing leg wax and denture paste for her. Is the girl in question his schoolfriend Ella? "Ella's eight, I'm nine," Ted tells his mother. "We have nothing in common."

Life of Riley is aimed fairly and squarely at viewers who wish the old-fashioned sitcom would make a comeback. This one has all the old favourite ingredients - inept parents, sophisticated teenagers, misunderstandings, silly walks and a touch of farce. You can hear the gags coming long before they appear, and when they do, they are greeted by shrieks of canned laughter. If you don't mind all that and you have a soft spot for Caroline Quentin, well . . . over to you. And as if to prove the old-fashioned sitcom is alive and kicking, it is followed by a brand new series of The Green Green Grass.

Caroline Quentin, plays a harassed mother very well - she was one in Blue Murder as a copper with a young family. This is a comedy, though, so prepare yourself for lots of misunderstanding and smart back-chatting youths as she plays a mum who also has step-children to contend with.