PICK OF THE WEEK

Welcome to the Family

Netflix

You know those shows where you watch the whole thing and still can’t figure out if you love it or hate it? This is one of those.

A Catalan dark comedy — almost definitely the first Catalan TV series any of us will have watched — Welcome to the Family is a weird cross between Modern Family and Weekend at Bernie’s. The first thing it does is force you to choose between keeping the default American overdub (I lasted about a minute) or rattling through the settings to restore it to the more comfortable but less convenient Catalan with English subtitles.

Once that’s taken care of, the first episode lays out the show’s slightly absurd premise. It centres around Angela, an archetypal tough-as-nails single mum with a heart of gold (a la Sam from Better

Things or Della from Raised By Wolves), whose unconventional family (two sons — one white, one black — and a daughter) get kicked out of their apartment.

Desperate times force the family and Angela’s live-in brother-in-law to go capin-hand to her estranged father, a mean, wealthy old man who looks quite a lot like Rupert Murdoch. When he drops dead, leaving his entire estate to Angela’s successful brother, she and his mad-asa-snake second wife decide to keep his death a secret while they figure out how to get their fair share of his fortune. Cue a quite odd mix of comedy hijinks — various setups to do with hiding a dead body — and earnest family drama.

It’s a bit all over the place, but does have an eccentric foreign charm. It is film festival season, after all.

Calum Henderson