FAMILY FEUDS
Martin Freeman on why his new show’s character won't be winning Father of the Year anytime soon. By Dominic Corry
Since it began, television has only really offered up an idealised notion of child rearing. From early sitcom classics such as and through 1980s staples such as and and even into the current Golden Age, with shows like
and we’ve rarely strayed from the path of parental perfection.
Some more recent examples have purported to “get real” by showing how much of a “nightmare” parenting can be, but none have come remotely close to portraying the soul-crushing, despairinducing, sleep-deprived s***-show that it often is.
That disparity between popular fiction and lived reality inspired British actor Martin Freeman, best known for
and trilogy, to co-create a new comedy series called
in which he also stars. “Hopefully to show that that’s what we all feel about parenting,” Freeman says. “Which is a three-dimensional experience. Some of it is hilarious, some of it’s terrifying and some of it’s grief, often within the same hour. I don’t think [we’ve seen that] in a TV comedy context to this extent.”
follows London couple Paul (Freeman) and Ally (Daisy Haggard —
and the variety of struggles they face raising 7-year-old Luke (George Wakeman) and toddler Ava (Jayda Eyles). The bracing approach to the topic asserts itself early in episode one, where before even the two-minute mark, Paul is casually joking about which duvet would be most effective for murdering both of his children.
“When you become a parent,” says co-creator Simon Blackwell
“you’re given this perfect human being and told you’re gonna bring this human being up and let them go into the world. And theoretically you’ll do it perfectly. But you won’t, you will fail. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here.”
“I think it’s just to take some of the guilt away,” adds the show’s third co-creator, Chris Addison “To say, this is how it is and sometimes it’s really difficult to bring up your kids and you will always love them, but they will also drive you mad if we can be honest about it.”
After coming up with the germ of the idea, Freeman joined experienced comedy TV producers Blackwell and Addison for a series of lunches where they fleshed out the concept.
“It ended up kind of being like a fathers’ support group,” says Freeman. “We talked about some of the worst things that we’ve done or that have happened to us as parents.”
Freeman says he was committed to being completely honest about the maddening realities of raising children.
“I genuinely don’t think anything should be off limits,” says Freeman. “To do it in a comedic way, it’s a really nice challenge. Characters you can still laugh at and hopefully love and relate to. But second by second, they can be lovely with their kids, or demonic. And I think part of our challenge is to keep that funny and light. I would love to put in as bad a thing as you could put in.”
Freeman says his own children, now 11 and 14, know they are the catalyst for the show.
“If anyone ever asks me: ‘What’s
about?’, my kids will pipe up and say, ‘It’s a show about how much you hate us’.”
The show features many moments where Paul and Ally verbally lose their rag at Luke and Ava, and Freeman says measures were taken to prevent the child actors from being exposed to too much swearing.
“There are rules about what they can and can’t see and hear. If there’s a lot of swearing in the scene, we do a cleanedup dialogue version, and then once the kids have left we get to do the swearing.”
Even so, there were times when the child actors had to be reassured.
“[There was] a scene where I’m screaming and cursing at them,” says Freeman. “And lovely little George, who plays my son Luke, he was fine with it and then about two minutes later, he was quite upset, so we had to go and explain that this is all acting. [I said] ‘I do think that about you a little bit, but not a lot’.”