Fam Time
Banished by a network CEO, did this commissioned sitcom at least deserve the chance to find itself an audience?
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Reviews, Top Stories
In the five years that Fam Time sat on the shelf at Seven it has become less of a sitcom and more of a curiosity piece.
How bad could the show be that the CEO refused to let it screen, after he ‘inherited’ it from the previous management in 2019?
The comedy was created and produced in-house under former Seven comedy boss Michael Horrocks. But during (another) round of cost cuts he was let go while the completed series was sent to the basement. Even Seven execs struggled to come up with a rational answer or future plan.
Fast forward to 2024 and a change in management has at least let the show see the light of day via 7Plus.
It arrives as somewhat dated, and not exactly a contender in the year’s annual comedy stakes. But did it really deserve this kind of treatment?
‘Mum-preneur’ Belinda (Michala Banas) heads up a family of six who are addicted to their screens. While she is building a following on “Belinda’s Blended Blog”, daughter Tahnee (Karina Banno) already has a huge following with her ‘aural sensations’ YouTube videos squishing lettuce leafs into a leather glove, son Rylan (Benson Jack Anthony) is addicted to online dating, and ‘adopted Filipino ray of sunshine’ Cherry (Chloe De Los Santos) is a demon on the gaming console.
That just leaves hapless dad John (Duncan Fellows) who spends inordinate amounts of time in his mancave / workshop coming up with wacky inventions such as the ‘hands free ladypee.’ Eww.
Belinda’s second marriage to John, which brings the teens together as a blended family, hints to Brady Bunch origins, but there’s probably ambitions to Modern Family too, especially with the (belated) arrival of cougar and grandma Viv (Rhonda Burchmore). Alas, despite the best efforts of the cast it’s nowhere near as sharp.
Banas and Benson Jack Anthony, in particular, work hard with the comic timing and punchlines that struggled to generate many laughs. Belinda’s obsession that “everything is content” is a little tiring without developing more of the core reason why everybody in this house prefers to spend time alone than apart. Are they all so insipid, or is Rylan avoiding his own Greg-Marcia crush on his new half-sister? I dunno.
Things certainly liven up when Rhonda Burchmore arrives in episode three with the great opening line, “Surprise f***ers! Someone order a sexy siren from Byron?”
If only it had been episode one…..
There’s also a standard sitcom ancilliary character who becomes an unofficial family member -you know the type, Fonzie, Nudge, Cousin Oliver, in the form of Kiwi handyman Bill (Tainui Tukiwaho), and bugger me, a young Aaron Chen in a recurring role as the Menulog delivery guy. Seven could have sold the show on that alone?
For all its rather underwhelming gags and often-dated tech humour, the final product is far from being the worst sitcom we’ve seen (Bullpitt! anyone?). Personally, I think it should have been animated and gone further to offend, and taken even more risks than this largely vanilla product.
But the idea of doing comedy (and let’s face it, Seven does stuff all that doesn’t include Paul Fenech or apparently Seven News) is to let the show find its feet and more importantly, an audience. Fam Time isn’t my cuppa tea, but with so many channels and timeslots I really think it at least deserved the respect to try and carve one out.
Sadly, the treatment by management means that the network will probably now take ages to commission a sitcom again, which is bad for both creatives and audience.
Fam Time will now always be remembered for what happens when a CEO decides what’s funny and what isn’t.
Fam Time is now screening on 7Plus.
- Tagged with Fam Time
18 Responses
It’s not great but not absolutely terrible either. It’s one of those shows in the mediocre/ guilty pleasure range.
2.5/5
It’s not good, but it’s no worse than any of the Paul Fenech shows on 7mate.
At least it didn’t vanish halfway through ep 1 like naughtiest home videos
It’s no more cringe than everything else on Seven. They should have aired it in a 9/9.30 slot. My guess is they couldn’t pair it with anything else and it’s a bit M rated language/theme-wise to put it anywhere else as Seven is so risk-averse.
Totally agree. It could have been paired with Mrs Brown’s Boys on 7 or Fat Pizza or Australia’s Sexiest Tradie on 7mate.
I have been very intrigued about this show since it was announced 5 years ago.
Your 2 star review is about right having watched the entire series in the last few days as by towards the end of episode 2, that decision by James Warburton to leave it on the shelf came into my head more and more (the irony of a line in an episode “No one watches TV these days because it all online” can’t be lost) to what timeslot was this show aimed at? to would it have lasted the 6 weeks in a single stint without being dumped? (I suspect not)
The 2 appearances of Rhonda Burchmore is the highlight of the series with Michala Banas works hard with her material however the storylines involving Rylan internet dating escapades are overused and Tahnee is left with nothing to do after a good intro in episode 1.
A Sam Armytage & David Koch hosting Sunrise scene in an episode shows how dated the show is now as a first run in 2024.
There is no way it would have lasted the 6 weeks on free to air. The average viewer would barely have given this 5 minutes. It was cringe straight out of the gate.
It may be cringe but Love At First Sight and Travel Guides are completely cringe and rate
“Bainshed”?
Sorry, fixed.
Just watched the first 2 episodes. Yikes. I found the humour incredibly immature. I guess I have been spoilt by sharply written Australian comedies in recent times like Fisk, Utopia and Colin From Accounts. Even fellow family comedy How to Stay Married had much better writing was more enjoyable than this. It’s actually made me appreciate How to Stay Married more as I now realise how much it got right.
Australian sitcoms is a hard genre to make here. Very hit and miss, which is a shame (luckily Colin From Accounts and Fisk are recent success stories). A shame that Fam Time isn’t that great.
But after five years of being “shelved”, it still doesn’t need to be shafted to 7Plus. This needs actual telly airing.
The treatment of this show, regardless of the quality, says a lot about how Seven thinks of its audiences. Serving them Blow Up but scared to share an original scripted comedy they had in the can… try letting audiences decide and ditch the bias in favour of unscripted trash.
I posted on the original story that I could only get through 2 eps and gave up. On Davids advice I will watch ep3 and see if I could get into it. Based on ep1 ans ep2 I regarded it as awful.
Aww, I liked Bullpit
Bless.
I agree it deserved a chance to be broadcast and not be shelved. I am enjoying it.
Bullpit, Fam Time, Here Come the Habibs (which did rate but was heavily critised for stereotypes), Dog’s Head Bay there”s plenty of blame to spread around. We will just have to hope that they put more effort into writing the scripts for Fisk S3, now it’s been a hit on Netflix, than they did when they rushed the production of S2.