Sam wants the mother-in-law in our comedy drama to be the sane ‘voice of reason’ in the family and, well, I don’t know if that’s a good idea - is there such a thing? Yes, yes, I know – we’ll all be mother-in-laws eventually - but sane? I doubt it. By the time my son marries, I’m going to be completely loopy. If it’s not his irritating habit of having a shower and washing his hair before he plays football that sends me over the edge it’ll be his habit of taking everything out of the packed lunch I prepare for him and repacking his own.
And then he brings most of it home from school – uneaten.
In real life Sam has two daughters and they seem to me to be so much more uncomplicated - although perhaps I should ask Sam about that, sometimes things aren’t what they seem are they?
Anyway, according to William Smethurst in How to Write for Television, character is important, but we shouldn’t have too many of them. Better, apparently, to have a small group of characters than to juggle a large cast. And we’ve decided that our fictional family should have a teenaged daughter.
We also think that a couple of badly behaved twin boys aged six or eight would have great comic potential – but we don’t know yet whether they play football. Perhaps they do and perhaps they will also insist on taking a shower before their football matches when they get to be 12 years old?
And of course, that would then explain why the mother in our comedy drama is an absolute nutcase.
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