I hate Outnumbered

There, I've said it. And I feel better for saying it. I thought I was alone in this opinion until I read the review by Sam Wollaston in the Guardian today.

Given my belief that Western civilisation is about to collapse (quite possibly by next Tuesday), I am used to seeing Wollaston and his affected adolescent anti-intellectualism - it is known in the literature as Zoe Williams Syndrome - as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. But he is spot on when he writes:

"Twenty-nine!" yells nine-year-old Ben from the upper deck of an open-topped sightseeing bus. The middle-class Brockman family is having an educational day out, and Ben's decided he wants to play "spot the chav", shouting his tally out every time he sees a new one. 

Clearly, the correct response from his father, played by Hugh Dennis, would be to give the lad a damn good thrashing – for using a term that is sneery and offensive (as well as about five years out of date), and for mocking the less fortunate. [Though the child could grow up to be a Labour candidate.] 

Unfortunately, thrashing – in public anyway – is not in fashion as a parenting tool. Well, give him a bloody good talking to then, the hair-drier treatment. Does he? Does he hell. Mr Brockman whimpers an idle threat, so idle that a few minutes later Ben is shouting: "Thirty!" 

Ben's siblings are equally horrid. There's seven-year-old smartypants Karen, and 14-year-old bag-of-bolsh Jake. You know those parasitic wasps that develop inside the bodies of caterpillars, slowly killing them by feeding off their flesh? Well, the Brockman children remind me of those, their parents being the caterpillars of course (I know it doesn't quite work, because the caterpillars are a different species, but you know what I mean). 

The really depressing thing about Outnumbered is that I think it's pretty spot on, as a portrait of a typical middle-class London family. Some of it is even improvised: they're just being themselves, it's practically a documentary. I know lots of families like this. And these are exactly the people who are watching it, and laughing and saying: "Oh, they're just like us, isn't it funny?" Look again, though: yes, they are just like you, and isn't it appalling?

Another Guardian article, published to celebrate the return of the series, said:

According to the psychologist Dorothy Rowe, Outnumbered holds up a mirror to modern society, reflecting the position of children today. We are living in a time when children are being really listened to. "It's a marvellous change – it started to happen in the 70s as a by-product of the women's movement, and it's been happening more and more ever since," she says.

I hate to disagree with Dorothy Rowe, whom I have had dinner with and who was once very kind about an article I wrote on ADHD, but I think that the family life depicted in Outnumbered goes far beyond listening to children. As Wollaston writes:

Whatever happened to seen and not heard? Now, it's the parents who are seen and not heard. They cower in the background, servants to the monsters they've brought into the world, their own lives effectively over.

What these modern middle-class parents are saying to their children is: "You are on your own. I have nothing to teach you, no wisdom to impart. You are already much better and cleverer than I am." It is not listerning, but a total abdication of their responsibilities.

And a word about the adults' acting. I like Claire Skinner, but there is something horribly ingratiating about Hugh Dennis here as there is when he is being a comedian or appearing on a panel show. If he arches his eyebrows any further in his efforts to show he is aware of the ironies of the situation, he will do some nasty permanent damage to the vertebrae in his neck.