Unhappy families

By FRANCES GRANT

Take a sportswriter and his long-suffering wife, a pair of interfering parents and resentful brother who live just across the road and acknowledge no boundaries between estates, and you have the recipe for long-running American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond (TV3, 7pm and 8pm).

The show revolves around Ray Barone (played by stand-up comedian Ray Romano), a sports journalist living on Long Island with his wife, Debra (Patricia Heaton), 9-year-old daughter, Ally, and 5-year-old twins, Geoffrey and Michael.

Ray is the kind of guy who would like to follow the path of least resistance through his domestic life. But his meddling parents, Frank (Peter Boyle) and Marie (Doris Roberts), live across the street and embrace the motto, "Your house is my house".

Frank's favourite expression, "holy crap", is shouted at frequent intervals, and Debra is constantly subjected to mum-in-law Marie's slurs about her cooking. Brother Robert (Brad Garrett), a divorced policeman, constantly moves in and out of his parents' house, and loves to drop over and resent Ray's successful career and family life. Ray and Debra would like to experience the novelty of somebody knocking before entering.

Somebody must love Raymond. The sitcom has been a hit in the United States and a stayer, it is now into its eighth season. It rates at the number two comedy in the US behind the even older Friends.

American critics have pointed out that having two such long-running shows in the top two spots is a sign of one of the longest droughts in US television comedy.

TV3 loves Raymond enough to be screening reruns and fresh episodes. It started screening the show from its first season (it debuted in 1996 in the US) every weekday at 7pm from Monday, replacing the terribly tired Home Improvement. On Thursdays there's a double dose, with fresh episodes from season seven at 8pm. This offers the strange sight of wife Debra sporting two spectacularly different hair-dos on the same night.

Everybody Loves Raymond is a big improvement on Home Improvement, but it has not made the kind of impact here as other hit US sitcoms, such as Seinfeld, Cheers and Frasier.

Yet the show was festooned with Emmys this year, winning best comedy. It also earned Emmys for supporting actor Brad Garrett and supporting actress Doris Roberts. Roberts won her third Emmy for her role as the overbearing mother and Garrett earned his second straight victory as the jealous older brother. Romano won for lead actor in a comedy series last year.

Everybody Loves Raymond's success in the US may be partly because of its nostalgia factor. It's a return to family-based comedy - it's a kind of All In The Family with more cynicism than bigotry - from those 1990s sitcoms about the families people create for themselves with their friends.

In tonight's 8 o'clock instalment, "Meeting the Parents", the parents of Robert's fiancee, Amy, accidentally meet the wacky Barone clan. The encounter occurs when her folks show up unexpectedly at their daughter's apartment on a Sunday morning, intending to talk her out of the marriage. Instead they are treated to the alarming sight of Robert in nothing but his briefs. Then Frank and Marie arrive for brunch. It doesn't take long for the two sets of controlling parents to develop a solid dislike for each other. The situation goes from bad to worse when Ray and Debra stop by. Call it revenge of the home-invaded.