The Royle Family has to be one of the best shows of the last ten years. What made it so dynamic was the writing and of course the brilliant acting. The writing was always subtle and always carefully steered away from obvious gags. Its sheer genius and its main strength was the believability factor. This was evident in every episode ever made, and meant that we could all identify with at least one of the characters as being like a member of our own family.'The New Sofa' started off promisingly, with the four main characters indulging in the usual banter that we all love, and have sorely missed. However, after the first few minutes everything changed. I didn't recognise my old favourite, as it disintegrated into a farcical sitcom. Lines as subtle as a punch in the face, meant that you had guessed the gag, five lines before the punchline was delivered. Denise and Dave's frozen turkey farce was lifted straight out of an early 70s sitcom, and provided zero laughs, as they attempted to defrost the bird in a hot bath, kicked it in to an airing cupboard and then finally took to hacking it with various power tools. I quite enjoyed the scene with the reclining sofa. The line (referring to the sofa): 'It is flame retarded' was a particular favourite of mine. For me the saving grace was Helen Fraser, who played Dave's mum. It was refreshing to see her play a completely different role to her character in Bad Girls. She emerged as the only believable character, avoiding some of the pitfalls that the other actors had fallen into, due to the sledgehammer humour of the script. In fact some of the better parts of this episode were between the two mothers. I missed the next door neighbours; and I missed Nana. Having her photograph etched on a Christmas tree bauble wasn't enough. This episode lacked the pathos that every episode had given us previously. The format had been unwisely changed and the result was the only sub standard episode ever produced. On the plus side, this is still probably much funnier than any other sitcom that is on our screens today.
Review of The New Sofa
