‘This family sitcom has got true warmth’
Ahead of Here We Go returning to BBC1, Jessica Rawnsley talks to Tom Basden, Katherine Parkinson and Alison Steadman about the hit sitcom
The Jessops are back. The hapless, dysfunctional, hazardprone but lovable British family who shouldered their way onto screens and into hearts in 2022 returns for a second season (with a third already in the pipeline).
The BBC’S acclaimed sitcom Here We Go centres on an ordinary, average, suburbiabased family. The characters fall into familiar tropes – there’s the incompetent dad, an unemployed former Olympic archer, Paul, played by Ghosts’ Jim Howick; the slightly manic, overenthusiastic mum, Rachel, played by The IT Crowd’s Katherine Parkinson; a sardonic teenage daughter, Amy, played by The School Of Good And Evil’s Freya Parks; a nonchalant son hoping to become a Youtuber, played by Terminator’s Jude Collie; and an ever-present mother-in-law, Sue, played by Gavin and Stacey’s Alison Steadman.
Life for the Jessops is relentlessly chaotic. The caricature and comedy is anchored both by the brilliant performances of the stellar British cast and the undercurrent of real, unconditional love between the characters. While every episode is punctuated by laughs and absurd sequences, there is depth there too, each family member fully formed.
“I just think it’s lovely to see a family all together like that,” says Steadman, 77, on the sitcom’s broad appeal.
“They’ve all got their individual characters and they have their ups and downs, their arguments and the things that go wrong, but then they are a family and they do love each other. There’s a warmth between them. And I think everyone loves that – to have a family sitcom that’s got true warmth.”
“There’ve been a lot of family sitcoms over the years and I think sometimes they feel a bit tepid in the humour and a little bit gentle I suppose,” adds Parkinson, 45.
“But I feel like with Here We Go, the humour is quite sharp, it’s quite surprising and I’ve never felt it’s a cosy show. I think it’s quite dangerous, some of the jokes, and really, really funny. And Tom does that brilliantly – he takes the formula and really runs with it and makes it original and surprising.”
Here We Go’s creator is the After Life star and co-creator of Plebs, Tom Basden, who appears in the sitcom as Rachel’s needy brother Robin.
“Writing a character like Robin is almost a way for me to create the kind of character that I really want to play that no one ever casts me as,” reveals Basden.
“In other people’s stuff, I’m generally quite sort of straight and I guess kind of a low status every man is what I often am. And what I really like doing, as with Plebs, is playing quite ridiculous people and just enjoying the absurdity of normal people a bit more.”
Normal people floundering through life’s misadventures in sometimes absurd, always hilarious, sketches is what made comedies such as Outnumbered and Peep Show such hits – and with its first season, Here We Go planted its own flag firmly in the genre and assembled its own devoted fanbase.
“I never really wanted there to be any high concept thing – like a kidnap or winning the lottery or anything like that – I always wanted to make sure it was very much about people’s lives and people watching it would recognise their own lives and their own family,” explains Basden, 44.
With the second series he wanted to both keep it “simple and true to what it’s been” while also placing
“the characters in different situations and take them out of their comfort zone a little bit, open up the world a little bit more”.
This time round changes are afoot for the Jessops. Sue’s downsizing and grappling with leaving her home of five decades; Amy’s back from Norway and struggling to readjust to home life; and Rachel’s started her new university course where she’s trying to convince students half her age she’s one of them by donning her 90s getup and playing drinking games.
“I love making this show,” says Basden. “The cast are just such brilliant people to write for. And the real benefit of the second series is that the characters are bedded in now, both for me from a writing
point of view and for the cast from a performing point of view, so you can really dovetail what you’re doing to the individual strengths of the actors.”
“We do really have a lot of fun when we shoot it,” he continues, “and often we have to stop because we’ve taken things too far and it’s got too ridiculous.
“We make ourselves laugh a lot because we just keep pushing it and pushing it and seeing how far we can go with the same scene.
“And a lot of those tapes are completely unusable, obviously, but some of them are fantastic. Some of my favourite stuff in this series and last series has come out of that way of doing it – there’s a fluidity to it and a kind of spontaneity that’s impossible to fake really.”
“You just find yourself laughing on set when you’re in a scene,” says Steadman. “And Jim – he’s only got to turn his head and he has me in fits. He’s so funny. And Katherine just nails it every time.”
“I’m very grateful to Jim because he does enjoy just making other people laugh a lot,” continues Parkinson, “on and off, in the scene and not in the scene, and that makes the days go quickly.
“I do find it hard to look at him sometimes. I have to sort of focus on his ear instead because I do just find him so funny.”