To bubble like a baby when watching The Royle Family?

[FlyRobinFly]

DH thinks I’m insane but it gets to me in a way no other show can do.

I grew up a few miles outside Manchester and watching it takes me right back to being a teenager in the late 90s/early 2000s. Even the 2006 Queen Of Sheba episode where Nana dies is nostalgic. So much has happened since then in the word and in my personal life and watching.

It captures the Manchester working class family in the late 90s and early 2000s perfectly without making charicatures of it (like Shameless…). It’s my comfort show. Even the ‘funny’ bits that aren’t supposed to be emotional make me blub because my parents are just like the parents on TRF and my 2 grandma’s are are combined into one for the character of Nana.

It’s cheesy but watching it takes me right back to being 17 in my parents living room, exact same layout house and similar decor to TRF! Comings and goings of my sister and her boyfriend after having their first baby, us babysitting and loving it. Dad in front of the telly making witty jokes about what we’re watching and all of us killing ourselves with laughter. ”Have you had your tea yet?” from mum when I get home from being out with my mates. Genius.

Its brilliant. If you like it you will love Early Doors. Its by craig cash, set in a Manchester pub in the 90s. Absolutely brilliant, even better than the Royle family. Quiet humour.

To the regiment!

Love it.

I wish i was there!

Totally agree regards Early Doors. I worked behind a bar and the sound of 'one for yourself' then taking the 20 from the change, putting it into the pint pot took me back 26 years in an instant. Happy times.

It did lose it in the last couple of specials where the characters did become Shameless-like charicatures. But before that it was wonderful. I know my mum cried once at the Queen Of Sheba where Norma is thanking her daughter for not putting her into a home because my mum did have to have her parents move into a residential home because of circumstances, but she came to terms with it eventually.

Watching it just makes me miss the comings and goings of my parents living room in 1999. Neighbours…family members, babysitting my baby nephew. We all used to go to watch the local shite football team as a family at weekend and come home and have fish and chips, and my sister and her partner would always pop round with the baby and nick our chips, they were known for it and it was hilarious. Such a Denise thing to do. After they’d gone I’d always be off to the pub to see my mates. It was lovely and I took it for granted at the time.

YANBU

It was a masterpiece.

Totally agree, grew up Manchester born and bred and watching Royle Family feels like watching old family videos to me. It makes me cry laughing and cry actual tears equally! It’s my comfort programme.

I love the RF. Queen of Sheba episode was fantastic. Caroline Aherne a great loss.

Of course, the one time we did get extra fish and chips in expecting the weekly unannounced pop-in of Dsis and her partner, they didn’t come 😂

I can’t watch Queen of Sheba since I lost my Nana, it’s just too spot on.

Absolutely to early doors! TO THE REGIMENT!

I love it but they should have finished with the queen of Sheeba. It's terrible after that which is a shame

It’s the exact area of Manchester I’m from as well, I believe. My neck of the woods is mentioned a few times. That’s what makes it so real, it’s like it was made for me as the audience!

Could’ve written this, op, although I think i’m a tiny bit older, I was 20 in 1999.
I left to live abroad a few years later and I remember watching an episode in my room on my little tele the night before I left and remembering the Oasis song. I’ve been back to my home town quite a lot of times since, but not for around 6 years as my parents, brother and sister moved to Cornwall and my grandma & grandad passed away 😢
I miss those times so much, it feels like a lifetime ago, very happy memories.
Do you still live in the same area now? Is it like that at all now?

Shoot me but I didn't get what the fuss was about with this... I just found it really boring. The actors were wonderful but the material bored me silly.

I agree OP, but I actually can't watch it for the same reasons.

I find the nostalgia and the emotions a bit too much. It makes me feel homesick

Edited to add - just a few chords of that Oasis song is enough for me to feel a tidal wave of emotion.

@Itwillallbeokayok

All my grandparents are gone. We are still in the vicinity but my parents managed to swap their council house where I grew up with a more semi-rural HA property. They are happy there but it’s a bit of a longer drive. I’m still near the area I grew up but not right there.

My sister and her partner moved down south eventually. My older brother who had been a tearaway in the early 2000s eventually settled down and had a little girl but he separated from his partner and lives alone now.

We all get on and still see each other (Dsis comes up north quite often but not usually with her DC now) but it’s not the same, no. My parents house was always the “hub”. It was everybody’s home even if you didn’t live there but that house is gone now.

The simple things are gone. Stuff has to be arranged and planned to a much greater degree now and nobody can afford impromptu fish and chip dinners (which was always a big thing for us) at somebody’s house. We no longer laugh and take the piss out of crap on the telly when we’re together as usually somebody is spending hours looking for something to watch on Netflix (never actually deciding on anything) whilst everybody else gets bored of waiting and goes on their phones so the living room becomes soulless and silent.

Like TRF, the telly was the central focus points of evenings in our family, but in a sociable way. Even in the early 2000s the selection on TV was limited compared to now, so we’d just make do, stick some crap on and take the piss out of it and I loved it. Now when we’re together something will go on Netflix for 2 minutes then get turned off because nobody can get in to it, or somebody doesn’t like it bla bla bla. And then, as I said, everybody just ends up on their phones whilst the telly powers itself off in the background and nobody even notices. I like Christmas because it’s like how I remember watching the telly with my family being, waiting for specific stuff to come on or just seeding what’s on each channel and choosing.

Oh I’ve had times where I can’t watch it. When I was in the midst of infertility I couldn’t have beared to watch it. I’ve had a baby now and remember being a literal blubbing mess at the episode where Denise is in labour when I was pregnant.

@FlyRobinFly Oh that’s sad 😔

@picnicshnicnic I also can’t watch it really, if I do, I love it, but then feel really melancholy afterwards.

I saw Caroline Aherne out and about a few times at the local shopping precinct a few years before she passed. What a loss she was 😔

@FlyRobinFly She was so incredibly talented

Just watched the Christening episode…now I’m a wreck 😂