I was staying in a hotel in Reading for work recently, and I switched on the television to find The Real Housewives of Cheshire. I watched for a few minutes with a mixture of fascination and bewilderment, thinking about how different this was from the television I grew up with. And then it occurred to me that all roads, for this episode at least, lead to Reading. Because it was in Reading in 1974 that a BBC documentary crew moved in with an ordinary family and made something that changed British television forever.
The Family was broadcast by the BBC in 1974, directed by Paul Watson and produced by Franc Roddam. The idea was deceptively simple: find an ordinary British family, spend enough time with them that the cameras eventually become part of the furniture, and film whatever happened. The family selected were the Wilkins family, a working-class household from Reading, with Bill and Marg at its centre. The crew embedded themselves in daily life for months. Meals, conversations, arguments, celebrations, boredom. Everything was potentially part of the story.
To understand why this was so revolutionary, you have to understand the television landscape of 1974. Britain had only recently entered the age of widespread colour television. There were three channels. Families gathered around a single set in the evening, usually after a good-natured argument about what to watch. The BBC carried genuine authority, and documentaries existed, but they felt like documentaries. There was a narrator. There were experts. There were interviews to camera. What was far less common was the feeling that you were simply watching real life unfold.
The Family changed that. When it aired, there was no narrator guiding viewers and no presenter explaining what to think. Audiences were left to watch and interpret events for themselves. In an era when the stiff upper lip was still very much a cultural reality and family matters were considered private, the sheer intimacy of what they were watching felt startling. Arguments between husbands and wives. Tensions between parents and children. Moments of real anger and tenderness captured without comment.
Perhaps the most talked-about member of the household was not a family member at all but the lodger, Tom Bernes. Young, charismatic and outspoken, Tom’s love life became a major topic of national conversation. People discussed him at work and in pubs. His behaviour was debated in newspaper columns. In many ways, Tom became one of Britain’s first reality television stars, decades before anyone used that phrase.
The controversy that surrounded The Family was intense. Some critics argued that the programme encouraged middle-class viewers to observe a working-class family almost as a form of entertainment. Others felt it presented the Wilkins family with dignity and humanity. Questions emerged about consent and about the fundamental nature of the project itself. Did the presence of cameras change the reality they were supposed to be recording? When we watch people on screen, are we seeing who they really are or who they become when they know they are being watched? These are questions The Family raised in 1974 that we are still arguing about today.
The series became such a phenomenon that the wedding of Marian Wilkins to the lodger Tom, shown in the final episode, was mobbed by fans and photographers. An ordinary family from Reading had become public figures. The experience was not entirely comfortable for all of them, and the issues they faced are now familiar to participants in reality television programmes around the world.
Looking back at The Family now, it does look dated. The clothes, the hairstyles, the interiors, the rhythms of daily life including regular family mealtimes that seem less common today. Britain in 1974 can feel like a different world. But the emotions feel entirely contemporary. Family tensions, disagreements between parents and children, relationship difficulties: these things do not age. And perhaps that is why the series endures.
The Family was controversial, innovative, uncomfortable and enormously influential. It was not the first documentary, and it was not quite the first reality television programme either, that honour arguably belongs to the Michael Apted series 7 Up. But it demonstrated something that would shape decades of television: that audiences could become utterly fascinated by the everyday lives of ordinary people, and that extraordinary drama could be found within ordinary existence.
It was, in the best possible sense, a glimpse into the future of television itself.
Do you remember The Family? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave a comment below or join the conversation in our Facebook group. And if you would like to get your hands on our My 70’s TV Childhood Theme Tune Game, a nostalgic family game for people who grew up with 1970s British television, add your name to the waitlist right here.
Take care,
Oliver
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