Here We Go

Do your friends with kids look worried? Are you, a mom or dad, biting your nails? The power balance in our houses has shifted. Any child with a phone is a threat. One innocent video posted online, and they can invite the whole world into your house to watch you snoring in your underwear. It’s the new tabloid journalism. Now imagine the damage they could do with a documentary.

Menace with a camera Sam Jessop (Jack Christou) is recording his own family’s shenanigans and unwaxed, unvarnished life at home in brilliantly funny BBC comedy series Here We Go. Where American comedy series the Goldbergs has a similar theme, it’s set in the United States in the 1980s and oozes childhood nostalgia like globs of golden syrup. Here We Are is a much more familiar world, the here and now, with a family whose reality is much closer to ours in South Africa.

The Jessops are your basic beans on toast Brits. Money is tight, life is messy, and here are 5 things that we’re finding far too close to home…

Watch Here We Go now Watch BBC Brit now

Watch Here We Go Season 1 Mondays at 20:35 on BBC Brit, DStv Channel 120, and on Catch Up

Eww they’re just like us

Granny brings snacks and gifts

On a diet? Shame about that because gran Sue (Alison Steadman) has just arrived with a purse full of chocolate oranges, a profiterole tower… and a bunion corrector for mom’s birthday (lucky her), and a random cake because it was on special. You’d think she was senile, but no, she’s always been like this. You feel lucky, but a little fatter every time you see her. Or you get granny type B, who shows up with trinkets she’s found at the Crazy Store or tat from the local cheap shop. It tickled her fancy, but it’s not going to clutter up her house.

That clutter house!

Where there’s not someone standing, there’s stuff. Shopping bags, dishes in the sink, not one clear counter or kitchen surface, note-boards full of papers, half empty wine racks, 3 million fridge magnets, half burned candles left and right, cardboard boxes and shopping bags on the floor. There are random racks and space savers everywhere, family photos in heart frames, there’s that wretched knickknack of a chef haunting the kitchen windowsill, and we’ve even spotted a light switch without the switch plate. The Jessops’ house genuinely looks like a busy family lives in it and knocks things over all the time.

The dumb drama

The chaos in the show is so relatable that you will wish it wasn’t. The first episode’s struggle to get to an adventure park to redeem a voucher being a case in point. The Jessops leave it till the afternoon of the very last day to get going and one thing after another goes wrong (including a horribly plausible accidental dog kidnapping) as mom Rachel (Katherin Parkinson) becomes increasingly desperate to redeem her birthday present voucher. If you have a friend or family member who’s chronically late for everything, then this is that: The feeling of getting to restaurants as they’re closing.

No magic success

The family is aware of social media, they’re on it, but they’re not going places. Dad Paul (Jim Howick) has a YouTube archery channel and despite the fact that he literally has no other job, it’s gaining subscribers by the ones. If you have a cousin who’s always trying to make you watch their TikTok dances, like and subscribe to their channel, or who leaves links to their self-produced rap videos on your account, you know the pain. It’s like how you imagine living with the 2022 version of YouTuber Jake Paul would be.

The clothes

It really looks like it has been a while since any of the Jessops bought anything new. Everything has that clean but worn texture, a shlumpy silhouette and drab colours. Almost everyone’s wearing clothes that are a size too big, even when they’re nice. Nothing is tailored or fitted. Designer who? Name brand? Never heard of her.

It all makes Here We Go like putting on our own frumpy “around the house” clothes. Comfortable and familiar, with plenty of room to be funny.

Watch Here We Go Season 1 Mondays at 20:35 on BBC Brit, DStv Channel 120, and on Catch Up

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