Our top 10 fictional TV families

We look at the TV shows that gave us the most memorable, fun and entertaining families on the small screen.

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By Benjie Goodhart | Published - 12 Aug 2022 | Updated - 12 Jun 2024

You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.

What you can do, is choose your favourite TV families. And, unlike real families, you’re unlikely to end up arguing about politics, bedtimes or fashion choices.

So here's our nostalgic run down of our favourite TV families.

1. The Ewings - Dallas

Arguably the most dysfunctional family ever to grace our screens, the Ewings compounded their loathing one another by all living under the same roof at Southfork. Oil baron Jock and his wife Miss Ellie presided over sons JR, Gary and Bobby, along with Jock’s illegitimate son Ray, all of whom were constantly embroiled in some form of warfare against one another.

To give you taste, JR was married, and divorced, three times (twice to Sue Ellen), Gary was married four times (three times to Valene), Bobby was married four times (twice to Pam), and Ray was married twice.

There were also countless punch-ups, and barely a dinner passed without someone throwing a drink over someone else. Oh, and JR also got shot… by a member of his family.

2. The Waltons - The Waltons

The Waltons were about as far removed from the Ewings as it’s possible to get. A family eking out a living in rural Virginia during the Great Depression, they were wholesome, kind, decent folk who looked after one another and extended their hospitality to anyone who crossed their path.

John and Olivia, aka Pa and Ma, had seven children, namely (deep breath): John-Boy, Jason, Mary Ellen, Erin, Ben, Jim-Bob and Elizabeth. They all helped out around the home, wore dungarees, and occasionally worked at Pa’s lumber mill. It all sounds deathly boring, and a young audience today may not appreciate its charms.

But, for its time, The Waltons was a quiet masterpiece, a delightful slice of goodness in a cynical world. Good night, John-Boy.

3. The Simpsons - The Simpsons

In 1992, President George H W Bush made a speech in which he declared his intention to “make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons." In typically subversive style, the quote was added to an episode of The Simpsons, with the family reacting in horror to their presidential namecheck.

Homer is heavy-drinking, angry and accident-prone; Marge is his frustrated wife; Bart is a troublemaker; Lisa is a misunderstood romantic; and Maggie… well, Maggie has been sucking on a pacifier for at least 25 years.

But The Simpsons is full of deeply touching, vignettes – none more so than the tear-jerking moment when Maggie produces her first ever word, after Homer closes her bedroom door. “Daddy.” (That one word, incidentally, was voiced by Elizabeth Taylor).

4. The Trotters - Only Fools and Horses

Del Boy, the dishonest, smooth-talking, untrustworthy wide-boy with a finger in every pie was also, underneath it all, the caring, loving big brother who had raised his younger sibling, Rodney, after the death of their mother.

Naïve, intelligent, cultured and idealistic Rodney was frequently the butt of Del Boy’s jibes, but in the end, the two embody what family is all about: Love, and the occasional bit of intense irritation.

They were also good boys who took care of their grandad and Uncle Albert.

5. The Crawleys - Downton Abbey

Anyone who tells you that money guarantees happiness never watched Downton Abbey. In spite of having huge amounts of money, the Crawleys were no strangers to tragedy.

Lady Mary was widowed on the day she gave birth to her first child, Lady Edith was jilted at the altar, and her next fiancé was killed by the Nazis. Lady Sybil died in childbirth.

It frequently fell to the head of the family to keep everyone going amidst the tumult. And no, of course I don’t mean Robert, Earl of Grantham. I mean the irrepressible Violet, Dowager Countess, one of the great characters in TV drama history.

6. The Pearsons - This Is Us

When the NBC series This Is Us came to an end in 2022 after six sensational seasons, fans took to social media saying it felt like they'd lost a member of their own family.

The show follows the lives of Jack and Rebecca Pearson, and their three children, “the big three” – Kevin and Kate (surviving triplets) and Randall, who was born on the same day, abandoned at the hospital and adopted by the Pearsons. The story of their lives, and their own families, unfolds over multiple timelines, spanning several decades.

What’s genuinely brilliant about This Is Us is that it never relied upon melodrama to keep viewers hooked. In many respects, the Pearsons are a relatively normal family – which simply makes their story more relatable and therefore more powerful, than all the car-wrecks, murders and infidelities that litter so many inferior dramas.

7. The Pritchetts - Modern Family

One of the funniest and most touching shows on television, the sitcom ran for 11 seasons from 2009 to 2020, charting the life of one extended family, comprising three households: one nuclear, one blended, and one same-sex.

The family’s patriarch, Jay Pritchett, is an old-fashioned, surly curmudgeon with a heart of gold. He dotes on his glamorous, younger second wife, and his young stepson, while trying to make amends for his previous tough-love approach to his existing, now grown-up children from his first marriage.

The lesson of Modern Family, that comes through in every episode, is that it doesn’t matter what shape, age or orientation your family consists of. Where there is love, and kindness, and humour, there is hope.

8. The Roses - Schitt’s Creek

The premise of the wonderful Schitt’s Creek saw the formerly wealthy Rose family reduced to abject poverty, and left with one remaining asset – a small, rural town called Schitt’s Creek they'd bought because the name made them laugh.

Forced to move there, the snobbish and materialistic Roses are appalled by the lack of sophistication they find. Initially deeply unattractive, their metamorphosis from image-conscious, spoilt brats to fully-rounded people with morals is a joy that takes place over six glorious seasons.

Schitt’s Creek is a gentle gem of a show, and the Roses are its beating heart.

9. The Royles - The Royle Family

If Homer Simpson was real, and from Manchester, he’d be Jim Royle: Lazy, fond of a beer, and never happier than in an armchair in front of the TV.

But, like Homer, his gruff, selfish demeanour belies a man who genuinely loves his family. Wife Barbara is your typical working-class mum – the emotional heart of the family, constantly fussing over her kids and looking after everyone’s needs and trying to stop them all from giggling at their own farts. Daughter Denise is as selfish and lazy as her dad, but also as sentimental. Son Antony, bless him, is the family dogsbody, either making tea for everyone or being mercilessly teased. The creation of Craig Cash and the late, lamented Caroline Aherne,

The Royle Family trod similar ground to Roseanne, but did it in funnier, and more touching, style.

10. The Starks - Game of Thrones

The whole point of the Royles was that nothing ever really happened to them. Time passed. They watched telly and drank tea. More time passed. That was it. You couldn’t really say the same about the Starks. They really had quite a lot to deal with.

The family everyone rooted for in this epic, bloody dynastic drama had more than their fair share of trauma. One was beheaded, two were murdered, another was exiled, another thrown out of a window and confined to a wheelchair, another married to a psychotic maniac, and another still doomed to walk the plains of Westeros seeking revenge.

But they were noble, good, heroic people in a world filled with tyrants and killers, and we loved them.

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