The Kennedys

The Kennedys: more than just rose-tinted memories

Like Cradle To Grave and Danny And The Human Zoo, Emma Kennedy's sitcom mines a 70s childhood, but behind the nostalgia, there's a lot that is very timely.

Emma Kennedy is unlucky that her childhood-memoir sitcom comes so soon after Raised By Wolves and Cradle To Grave, but it doesn't help itself by sticking to such well-worn ground: tonight, Dad (Dan Skinner) fails to dissuade Mum (Katherine Parkinson) from learning to drive, while 10-year-old Emma (the ace Lucy Hutchinson) hunts for the sender of her first Valentine. The characters are well acted, but are either familiar types or wacky wildcards, and feel secondary to the light-brown 1970s nostalgia.

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Three years in the making and birthing, The Kennedys is now on BBC One. Its creator and writer Emma Kennedy tells us how it happened.

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The Kennedys was not, in fact, the soapy American biopic drama starring Katie Holmes as Jackie O, but a new family sitcom set in the 1970s. The opening episode was introduced by the 10-year-old Emma (Lucy Hutchison), a Star Wars-obsessed tomboy who witnesses her parents' attempts to host a newfangled, mysterious thing called "a dinner party".

Much hilarious japery is meant to ensue. But it's basically just a series of cliched jokes about the 70s. When Mrs Kennedy, played by the ever-brilliant Katherine Parkinson, says she intends to make a lasagne, there is the obligatory "pasta in it and not in a tin? That's madness!"

Of course, one of the guests turns up with a cheddar and pineapple hedgehog. There's a Space Hopper in the garden, a joke about a woman's breasts cushioning her fall and an exotic foodstuff called "garlic bread", which Emma's father tries to make out of sliced white Mother's Pride. If the past is a foreign country, this was the televisual equivalent of poking fun at Johnny Foreigner.

Still, it's a sitcom and probably doesn't aspire to be subtle or genre-busting. The Kennedys does what it says on the (pasta) tin and it's jolly and well acted. Probably worth sticking with for Katherine Parkinson alone.

The Kennedys had the tough job of following Have I Got News For You on BBC One. The Kennedys is based on the memoirs of journalist Emma Kennedy and just like Danny Baker's Cradle to Grave takes us back to the 1970s. Unlike Cradle to Grave, the family in The Kennedys isn't constantly shouting at each other and instead Emma's parents Brenda and Tony (Katherine Parkinson and Dan Skinner) are relatively demure when compared to their friends and neighbours. The opening episode sees Brenda live her aspirations of hosting the first dinner party in their small neighbourhood of Jessop Square. Brenda then instructs Tony to make a lasange, something that baffles him due to the fact that he has to use pasta that doesn't come from a tin. Tony asks friend Tim (Harry Peacock) to try and help him track down some pasta only to discover that his mate is conducting an affair. At the same time Brenda learns that Tim's girlfriend Jenny (Emma Pierson) is pregnant and hasn't told her other half yet. This perfectly sets up the comedy goldmine that is the awkward dinner party which includes Tim spending the entire meal bare-chested and his lover walking in on the meal to threaten physical violence against most of the guests. I was surprised by how much I liked The Kennedys and I think it had a certain sense of innocence that you don't see in sitcoms any more. That may have something to do with the fact that the comedy has a pre-teen protagonist in Lucy Hutchinson's Emma, with the young actress proving to be a comic revelation. Meanwhile the reliable Skinner and Parkinson were an absolute delight to watch as the social climbing parents with the former pulling off a great Welsh accent. Whether or not The Kennedys can keep the momentum of this first episode going remains to be seen but on first impressions this is a refreshingly likeable old-fashioned sitcom.

The Kennedys preview

No, nothing to do with the US political dynasty, this BBC sitcom is loosely based on Emma Kennedy's memoirs The Tent, The Bucket and Me.

This period sitcom is based on writer Emma Kennedy's account of her 70s childhood, and is a riotous look at "new town" life through the eyes of 10-year-old Emma. Autobiographical details take a backseat to the inherent comedy of the era itself - a time when aspirational consumption collided with guileless English provincialism. In this opener, Emma's mother (Katherine Parkinson) and dad (Dan "Angelos Epithemiou" Skinner) host a gathering, Abigail's Party-style.

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TV Review: The Kennedys

Get over the constant knowing references, and there's charming comedy at the heart of The Kennedys thanks to it's a cast of warm, likeable characters.