Packed to the Rafters and Offspring review

Television families have segued from "Aww!" to "Omigod!" writes Diana Wichtel.

Asher Keddie in Offspring: glassy eyes

Since the first set colonised the first living room, making slaves of us all, the television family has been a mainstay of the schedules. It was all part of the postwar boom in labour-saving devices. Why bother with the tiresome complexities of trying to communicate with the rellies when you could watch others do it for you, all tidily contained in a box?

Over the decades we’ve seen the cornerstone of society in all its often-ghastly manifestations: wholesome and ideal (Leave It to Beaver); fractured and fractious (Brothers and Sisters); or bright yellow and four-fingered (The Simpsons). It began when 50s housewives slapped on full warpaint and home-stitched housedresses in a doomed attempt to replicate the terrifying 50s model, fretting over commercials in which husbands mused, “How can such a pretty wife make such bad coffee?”

There was the odd aberration. The Goldbergs hit American screens in 1949. It was set in the Bronx and featured Molly Goldberg, her incomparable gefilte fish and her trademark “Yoo hoo!” But mostly television families in those days were suburban and Wasp, and Dad was always right. By the 70s, there was The Waltons. What those poor mountain folk lacked in gleaming whiteware, they made up for in bucketloads of nostalgic family values. Sample crisis: “The Walton children want to attend the carnival when it comes to Walton’s Mountain, but they decide to put the money to better use when Grandma breaks her glasses.” Still, a little diversity had begun to creep in. See the episode where John-Boy – was there no end to his ingenuity? – organises an impromptu bar mitzvah. This was the decade Archie Bunker’s macho mate Steve turned out to be gay!

Somewhere along the line, the experience of watching television families segued from “Aww!” to “Omigod!” There were the vaguely incestuous goings-on of the torrid Manson family in the 1976 British drama Bouquet of Barbed Wire. The 80s – Dallas, Dynasty – were a particularly bad decade, unless your family-bonding sessions ran to catfights in the lily pond. The old values held on by their leopard-print fingernails as Beverly Hills 90210’s Cindy Walsh still managed to whip up chocolate-chip cookies for those evil twins, Brenda and Brandon. But it was the beginning of the end. Soon enough, the things television fathers would know best about included how to be a Mob boss in New Jersey (The Sopranos), bagging up body parts (Dexter) or turning out a killer batch of crystal meth (that brilliant critique of free-market capitalism, Breaking Bad).

Here, Outrageous Fortune gave us our own lovably antisocial West family. They were a bit tame by the body count of American cable families, but then they were too busy swearing and having sex. Now the Australians are making so many heartwarming family series that they have infiltrated TV1’s Sunday evenings. Where once you might have seen Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen knew a thing or two about family dysfunction), we have the lovable, wacky Rafters in Packed to the Rafters, followed by the lovable, even more wacky Proudmans in Offspring. The Castle has much to answer for.

The second season of Offspring reveals that, with enough interior monologue, fantasy sequences, flashbacks and flash-forwards, you need hardly any plot. Asher Keddie as Nina Proudman has perfected a look of bewildered mortification that the rest of the cast must itch to slap right off her face. Or as her mother sighs, “Your eyes are really glassy.”

Still, here’s a chance to see some New Zealand actors in gainful employment. Our own Rebecca Gibney has turned Julie Rafter into a Cheryl West-like national institution across the ditch without any swearing or even much sex. The Aussies can keep Phar Lap as far as I’m concerned, but the excellent Erik Thomson is another matter. Can we have him back, please?

Offspring’s second season features that guy from Go Girls. Jay Ryan, as slightly improbable obstetrics registrar Fraser King, has his kit off in a record first five minutes, thanks to one of Nina’s wretched fantasy sequences. No good is going to come of it, but then that’s the point. Nina is apparently an ace obstetrician, despite the idiotic, uncontrollably unspooling chick flick that passes for her brain when it comes to relationships. Over at the Rafterses’ place, they can’t seem to get rid of their hapless grown-up children, who, despite all that warm and wise parenting, have the combined emotional IQ of an overindulged sea sponge.

These shows probably have a lot to say about the modern family and about evolution in general, none of it particularly reassuring. Though some things have changed. Even Dexter has to make his own bacon and eggs of a morning. And it would be a brave man who dissed Cheryl West’s coffee.

PACKED TO THE RAFTERS, TV1, Sunday, 8.30pm; OFFSPRING, TV1, Sunday, 9.30pm.