Boxing Clever: Modern Family
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s choice is a cast iron family favourite in his house
Over the course of our children’s lives a number of ‘go to’ options have developed in our family; staple items that are guaranteed to deliver without the need for a referee, a committee or even much thought.
Need to knock up a quick tea? Defrost a pot of my wife’s homemade pasta sauce. Looking for an activity everyone will be up for? Off to the bowling alley.
Stuck for something to watch on the telly? Whack a Modern Family on.
I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve worked our way through the 11 seasons of this brilliant sitcom. We’re certainly well past the stage when there is a requirement to watch them in any sort of order, we can drop in and out at random and hit the ground running like a telly addict version of the SAS.
The festive episodes are as much a part of our Christmas routine as Nick Helm’s Christmas EP, the 14-day Radio Times and forgetting to take the lovingly prepared red cabbage out of the slow cooker on Christmas Day.
Modern Family takes the form of a mockumentary following the lives of the extended Pritchett family, whose households represent three examples of contemporary family life. Middle aged Jay (Ed O’Neil) lives with his young Columbian wife Gloria (Sofia Vergara) and her son Manny (Rico Rodriguez).
His daughter Claire (Julie Bowen) and her husband Phil (Ty Burrell) have three kids, while his son Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) lives with his partner Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and their adopted Vietnamese daughter Lily (Aubrey Anderson Emmons).
The opening credits and first few minutes of the pilot episode might fool you into thinking Modern Family is just another by numbers sitcom that somebody has forgotten to slap a laughter track on. The characters are all meticulously clean cut, and their homes look like high end furniture showrooms.
And then the families get together and something magic happens. They bicker and snipe and tease and rib each other. It turns out the Pritchett family all love each other dearly, but are all also black belts in sarcasm.
By the time Cameron introduces baby Lily with a flamboyant recreation of a famous scene from The Lion King and Jay’s eyes nearly roll out of his head you’ll be all in.
It’s how I imagine a remake of Keeping Up Appearances might look if it was scripted by The Thick Of It’s writing team. Modern Family ran from 2009 to 2020 and made huge stars of its lead cast, as well as being a critical and commercial success in America where it won 22 Emmy awards.
It’s very easy to see why – I can’t think of another show that manages to combine such broad appeal with razor sharp wit and writing.
All episodes are available to stream on Disney Plus amounting to 250 episodes in total. Is that enough time for Phil Dunphy to get his father in law to love him? There’s only one way to find out…
After 11 seasons the cast disappeared into the sunset, gone but certainly not forgotten in our house.