My Family

Disgruntled dentist Ben Harper, (Robert Lindsay) in the grip of mid-life crisis, decides to sell his practice and take up a hobby. However, he finds that even more boring, which his family is quick to discover.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the Harpers’ proclivity for getting things wrong, Susan (Zoe Wanamaker) moves up the art gallery ladder, but that leads to more than one fall.

Wednesday, 7 January, 8:00pm

Ben Harper, (Robert Lindsay) the disgruntled dentist doing his best to stave off middle-aged insanity, is a universal figure for fathers everywhere trying to negotiate the trials of family life.

With an ever-loving, culinary disaster of a wife, Susan, (Zoe Wanamaker) and three crazy, high-maintenance offspring, Nick, (Kris Marshall) Janey (Daniela Denby-Ashe) and Michael, (Gabriel Thomson) he reels from one crisis to the next and always manages to put his big foot in it.

In this episode, titled Lets Not Be Heisty, Ben attempts to put money into his bank, but while there, it is held up by robbers with sawn-off shotguns.

Disastrously, he decides to become the negotiator in the situation, much to the horror of the hostages for whom things become much bleaker.

Wednesday, 24 December, 8:35pm

Wednesday, 24 December at 08:35pm on ABC

Ben Harper, (Robert Lindsay) the disgruntled dentist doing his best to stave off middle-aged insanity, is a universal figure for fathers everywhere trying to negotiate the trials of family life.

With an ever-loving, culinary disaster of a wife, Susan, (Zoe Wanamaker) and three crazy, high-maintenance offspring, Nick, (Kris Marshall) Janey (Daniela Denby-Ashe) and Michael, (Gabriel Thomson) he reels from one crisis to the next and always manages to put his big foot in it.

In this episode, titled Lets Not Be Heisty, Ben attempts to put money into his bank, but while there, it is held up by robbers with sawn-off shotguns.

Disastrously, he decides to become the negotiator in the situation, much to the horror of the hostages for whom things become much bleaker.

Wednesday, 17 December at 08:00pm on ABC

The Parent Trap: Ben (Robert Lindsay) and Susan Harper (Zoe Wanamaker) and their crazy brood are back in a new series of this award-winning, immensely popular comedy.

Oldest son Nick (Kris Marshall) moved out some time ago, but daughter, single mother Janey, (Daniela Denby-Ashe) is still there with her young son, Kenzo (Tayler Marshall) and the brainy younger son, Michael, (Gabriel Thomson) 21, a university student with bleached hair and a pierced eyebrow. Completing the dysfunctional family nest are dotty cousin Abi (Siobhan Hayes) with her beau Roger (Keiron Self) and Nick’s friend, Alfie (Rhodri Meilir).

In this first episode, Ben takes delivery of a neighbour’s large, plasma screen television and falls in love with it.

Michael looks like going from virgin to father in one night when his current love interest announces she may be expecting a delivery too.

Wednesday, 10 December at 08:00pm

Susan Harper’s plans for a quiet family-only Christmas at a restful resort for her long-suffering husband Ben, start to go awry when son Michael sneaks girlfriend Gwen into his room.

Daughter Janey is shocked to find her son Kenzo’s father has brought him a pony for Christmas so she sets off to find something even better. Eventually all the Harpers are not only under the one roof, but in the same room, as they hide from a jail escapee dressed as Father Christmas, whom Ben knocks out cold, only to discover it is the hotel owner.

Then the other Father Christmas turns up and Ben gives him the same treatment, but finds it is one Janey has employed to surprise Kenzo.

Wednesday, 03 December 2008
08:00pm

Ben plans a bleak Christmas for the Harper household so is ecstatic when Susan announces there will be no tree, no decoration and even no family.

Susan whisks him away to a relaxing retreat in the country where the rest of the family cannot ruin his ‘festive free’ Christmas. But she has secretly arranged for them to surprise him on the big day.

But things go wrong from the outset as Ben settles down to relax in the hotel to begin the Christmas he has always dreamed of.

08:00PM
MY FAMILY: BLISS FOR IDIOTS
New Series Wednesday, 05 December 2007

Meet the Harpers. Ben, a grumpy dentist with a cynical outlook on life, is firmly convinced that his children are an entirely different species. Frankly, they frighten him. His wife Susan is a straight-talking, wisecracking control freak and very possibly the world’s worst cook. She’s a London tour guide. Their three children are as different as sand and ice cream. Surfing in a sphere far removed from reality, Nick (the eldest) is terminally laid-back, disrespectful and totally uninterested in holding down a job. Once daddy’s little girl, teen Janey has turned into a manipulative, moody, shopping machine with her hands on Ben’s credit card. And the youngest, Michael, has turned into a geek. He’s very clever, especially at thinking up money-making schemes, but he’s less successful with girls.

In episode one Susan becomes a devotee of American lifestyle guru and author, Dr Buck (Colin Stinton), who has agreed to come and stay in the Harper household and give a talk at Susan’s book club. Susan is besotted with him, but Ben is convinced he’s a charlatan.

Fed up with being turned down for yet another exclusive country club, Ben leaps at wealthy patient Mr Hoxton-Jones’s suggestion that he joins a secret men’s society called the Brotherhood of the Cockerel – even though it means walking and squawking like a cockerel during the initiation ritual!

The day of Ben’s initiation ceremony arrives and Hatchling Harper swears the oath of allegiance but he draws the line at participating in what happens next. Back at the house, Dr Buck is shattering Susan’s illusions.

PRODUCTION DETAILS: Executive Producers- Fred Barron, Geoffrey Perkins, Donald Taffner Jr. A DLT Entertainment UK Ltd/Rude Boy production for BBC