Parents

Sky1's penchant for overly gentle, family friendly sitcoms continues with one starring Sally Phillips. She plays Jenny, a mum who is forced, along with her husband and children, to move back in with her parents (Susie Blake and Tom Conti), where, suffice to say, they're not particularly wanted.

Sky 1's comedy firmly plants a flag on Modern Family territory with its crowd-pleasing farcical mix of hip oldsters, dippy parents and cool kids.

It most emphatically isn't Modern Family, of course; it's more like a lighter version of BBC1's My Family with its infantile mum and dad: Jenny (Sally Phillips) who loses her job and Nick (Darren Strange), the latest in a long line of hapless sitcom dads, a deluded pin brain with lame ideas about being an "entrepreneur".

As the family finances suffer and their house is repossessed, they have to move in with granny and grandad (Susie Blake and Tom Conti). The comedy catch is that the grandparents really don't want them and treat everyone, adults included, like kids. Just in case there's anything here you don't get, the whole premise is helpfully set out in the animated opening titles.

When Jenny Pope (Sally Phillips) loses her job due to a violent outburst against a colleague, her self-styled entrepreneur (read 'jobless') husband Nick (Darren Strange) and their children Becky and Sam are forced to move in with Jenny's parents. With three generations thrown together, there's a hint of Modern Family about Parents, not least in Nick's Phil Dunphy-esque role: Nick's desire to sway Jenny's father Len (Tom Conti), who thinks Nick needs to get a job, is very reminiscent of Phil's failed attempts to impress Jay. But although there are some amusing moments, Parents is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, with the possible exception of Jenny's rendition of the company mission statement to the Dad's Army theme tune. Ground-breaking it certainly is not, but it does have its moments.

Sally Phillips: 'Please God, let it not be My Family'

Sally Phillips and Tom Conti talk about their new recession-era family sitcom Parents.

If the opening episode of Lloyd Woolf and Joe Tucker's family comedy doesn't exactly sparkle, it shows some promise and boasts a good cast. When Jenny Pope (Sally Phillips) is fired from her high-profile job for fighting with a colleague, the family home is repossessed, so Jenny, husband Nick (Darren Strange) and their two children have to move in with her parents, Len (Tom Conti) and Alma (Susie Blake) in Kettering. However, it seems that Len and Alma, although accommodating, are not so willing to give up their daily routine.

This new sitcom boasts a prestigious cast, including Sally Phillips and Tom Conti, and a strong premise with lots of contemporary relevance - Phillips is sacked from her job after a violent clash with a co-worker, meaning that she and her family, including her useless "entrepreneur" of a husband - must move back in with her ageing parents in Kettering. All of this may yet yield something good, but this opening episode is clunky, cardboard stuff in the main that fails to make the leap from paper to screen. There's no laugh track but for all we know there could have been a primed studio audience watching who simply failed to chuckle throughout.

Sally Phillips and writer Lloyd Woolf on Sky1's Parents

Sky1 launches its latest British sitcom this Friday, with new family show called Parents, starring comedy queen Sally Phillips as a successful executive forced to move her family in with her parents after losing her well-paid job.

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Sky1 has had a good run when it comes to comedy of late - the likes of Trollied, The Cafe and Stella have all been big hits for the channel, and now Parents is hoping to repeat that success. From the minds of writing newcomers Lloyd Woolf and Joe Tucker, the series stars Sally Phillips as a working mum forced to move back in with her parents when she loses her job. Tom Conti also stars in this gentle but amusing sitcom.

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