The Kennedys

TV review: The Kennedys, BBC1

Prepare to have the pants charmed off you.

In the 1970s no more than three minutes was permitted to pass without sighting a gentleman's handsome chest foliage, groomed as much as his luxuriant lip warmer, and this highly chucklesome Seventies-set comedy is careful to include a historically accurate man carpet.

Written by Emma Kennedy and starring Katherine Parkinson and Dan Skinner as Brenda and Tony Kennedy, it's Brenda's aspiration to exhibit her modern sophistication by holding their street's first dinner party and to serve a classy Italian dish called 'la-san-ier'.

But this is the 1970s, when 'la-san-ier' was harder to find than the bar in a pub, blanketed by full-strength tar fags, which forces Tony and daughter Emma (Lucy Hutchison) to enlist the aid of a neighbour with the connections to provide Italian grub. This undertaking has the anxious energy of a drug deal, and what the neighbour drags the Kennedys into is a dinner party which is even better than Abigail's.

Funny outfits & even funnier stories in The Kennedys

Break out the cheese and pineapple hedgehogs and brace yourself for flared trousers and big hair, this family comedy takes us right back to the 1970s.

The Kennedys preview

It's rare for a BBC One comedy to strike a chord straight away, but Emma Kennedy has certainly achieved that with The Kennedys, a semi-autobiographical sitcom about her childhood.

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