The Life of Riley - Not when you are watching this (Life of Riley)

Member Name: dove3066

Product:	Life of Riley
Date:	18/03/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good acting

Disadvantages: Not enough comedy for a sit com

This was supposed to be sit-com which was 'supposed' to reflect the changing face of the British family - second marriage/second family. The programme starred Caroline Quentin (Men Behaving badly, Jonathan Creek) as Maddy Riley and Neil Dudgeon (Common as Muck) as Jim Riley.

Jim has two children Katie and Daniel and Maddy has a son Ted by previous marriages. They also have a small baby Rosie together. They have all just moved into a new house together and so much of the comedy revolves around the unpacking of the house. The comedy also often revolves around general misunderstandings of Maddy.

Many of the situations are really silly and do get a bit similar. I also felt that some of the episodes had been shown in a different order than they were written because there were inconsistencies between the episodes - in one episode Maddy thinks Dan is gay because he has no interest in girls yet in the first episode he had a girlfriend and Maddy found a pregnancy test which she thought could be his.

The second episode revolves around the family not being able to find many of their possessiond as they are already packed - yet they were decorating in the first episode.

There were some funny parts to this series but most of it wasn't really that funny and was a cliched. The acting was good by all members of the cast but the comedy needed to be better written in order to keep the interest going.

Episode summary
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Episode 0ne : Maddy finds a pregnancy test and jumps to many conclusions until she finds the correct owner - Probably the funniest episode of the series and shows good interaction between the characters.

Episode Two: The cat goes missing and we meet the neighbours. This episode has some funny moments but they are few and far between.

Episode Three: We meet Maddy's ex who seems to get on fantastically well with all other members of the family. There are some funny moments but they are unfortunately well telegraphed and easy to guess.

Episode Four: Katy becomes a vegetarian and Ted is bullied at school. This is another inconsistent episode as we already aware of Katy's feeling towards animals and the comedy is getting even thinner on the ground.

Episode Five: Ted doesn't want to go to his friends house for a sleepover and Maddy makes bigger and bigger lies. This is just a stupid episode and is totallu unbelievable most people would just say - "he is a bit unhappy at staying away overnight" rather than deciding to become Jewish!!!

Episode Six: Jim is asked to be the best man at Maddy's ex husbands wedding. I'm afraid I gave up a bit on this one I didn't find anything funny in the first 10 minutes and went off to do something else


This really looked as though it would be good and clips were funny but unfortunately these were the only funny bits - However my son (who's 12) found it really funny so perhaps I wasn't the target audience. I would say though that it was quite good to be able to sit down as a family and watch something without being bombarded with sex and bad language.

I don't suspect they will make another series - the characters were good but it just needed a better quality of writing.

Summary: A well acted but poorly written sit com