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The Family Pile, review: congratulations to ITV for inventing the joke-free sitcom

Clare Calbraith, Clare Keelan, Alexandra Mardell and Amanda Abbington star in the Liverpool-set family sitcom - Rachel Joseph/ITV
Clare Calbraith, Clare Keelan, Alexandra Mardell and Amanda Abbington star in the Liverpool-set family sitcom - Rachel Joseph/ITV

ITV is planning to launch a lot of comedies this year. ITV’s boss, Kevin Lygo, said recently that the broadcaster has barely commissioned any sitcoms in the past five or six years because audiences are so brutal: “When there’s a new comedy, you watch it and give it about four minutes, and if it doesn’t make you laugh then you just turn over.” People tend to stick with dramas for a couple of episodes at least before deciding to throw in the towel.

The arrival of ITVX will change all that, Lygo thinks, because comedies will hang around for a long time on the streaming service, and audiences can discover them over a longer period. “It hasn’t got the albatross that it’s got to get five million viewers at 9 o’clock,” he said. “We can let it grow.”

And so we have the first of these new comedies, The Family Pile, which is going out in a 9.30pm slot on the main channel but is also available as a box set on ITVX for you to watch at your leisure. But you won’t want to watch it, because it’s not funny.

Four sisters have to decide what to do with the family home after their parents’ deaths. These sisters – played by Amanda Abbington, Clare Calbraith, Claire Keelan and Alexandra Mardell – with their various partners and children, are torn between selling up and hanging on to the place that holds so many memories. Abbington rings true as the older and most sensible sister, exasperated by the way everyone expects her to take on all the responsibilities. The others are either flighty or selfish, although all are essentially good-hearted.

It aspires to be more than a broad, canned-laughter sitcom, aiming for the poignancy of Carla Lane’s Bread (also about a close-knit Liverpudlian family) or the brilliance of Derry Girls (there is a slightly dippy brunette here who is clearly inspired by the latter’s Aunt Sarah). But it falls far short of those because there are simply no laughs in it, however nicely written it might be. The fact that it all takes place in the house also gives it a claustrophobic feel, and halfway through an episode you’ll be desperate for them all to go outside.