8 Simple Rules (series 1)

(Amazon UK link)

I’m not sure where I picked up the DVD of the first TV series of ‘8 simple rules’. Perhaps it was at a church stall or a charity shop - I doubt if I paid more than about 50 cents for it. It looked interesting; I had not heard of the series, nor any of the actors, but we thought it would give a few evenings’ light entertainment.

We started watching a couple of months ago. The episodes are short - no more than about thirty minutes each - and we were quite shocked when the first one ended. So we’ve watched two at a time, one evening per week. There are 19 episodes in all, so last night we saw the last three. The DVD box says there’s also a blooper reel, but we couldn’t find it. Perhaps there was another DVD, no longer in our box set.

The series focuses on a family of five. The father, Paul (John Ritter) is middle-aged, genial but a bit naive. He’s struggling to know how to deal with his two teenage daughters Bridget (Kaley Cuoco) and Kerry (Amy Davidson). Bridget is tall, blonde, and not particularly bright. But she has the kind of appearance that’s attractive to young men, and has had a series of boyfriends. We understood that the ‘8 simple rules’ referred to her parents’ guidelines about dating, but it was never made clear what they were.

Kerry, by contrast, is shorter, red-haired, and very bright. She’s attractive too, in a different way, but quite insecure and often feels she is in competition with her sister. She’s a couple of years younger and, at the start of the series, thinks she’ll never have a boyfriend.

Then there’s Rory (Martin Spanjers) who must be about 12, and likes to stir….

Paul’s wife Kate (Katey Sagal) works as an emergency-room nurse, and is often out. Paul, who is a writer, works from home so a lot of the parenting falls onto him - and while he loves his daughters very much, he has little idea how to deal with them.

It’s a good idea, and the series covers various issues: honesty, integrity, being over-protective, when to relax the rules, and so on. Unfortunately there’s a lot of laughter, which we assume is canned (the series is American) and it’s quite distracting. It's also a bit disturbing that the actors sometimes seem to pause while the laughter dies down, making us wonder if it was filmed before a life audience.

Since each episode is so short, not a lot happens and it all felt quite trite in the beginning. We almost gave up, but we didn’t hate it… so we kept watching, two at a time though no more than once a week. The characters began to feel familiar to us, to get under our skins a little, and the stories became more interesting.

My favourite character was Kerry, who seems a lot more realistic than the supposedly perfect Bridget. Kerry thinks for herself, and she cares about the rest of her family. Bridget is more narcissistic and shallow, and Rory is just irritating. I liked the parents too; Cate’s character develops more as the series progresses.

So we see Bridget starting to drive, sneaking out of the house, dating unsuitable people, trying to figure out how to get around her parents' rules. We see Thanksgiving, and a Christmas episode that was a bit cheesy but enjoyable, and various minor characters, mostly boyfriends, who come and go. It's more like a soap than a sit-com, although each episode is complete in itself.

There's some humour in it - some clever lines here and there - but a lot of it was rather poignant, and some had us rolling our eyes at the father's naivety. Having now finished watching, we didn’t have any inclination to try to find the second series; one was quite enough.

I wouldn't recommend looking for this but if you come across it in a charity shop at a good price, it's not a bad show for light, undemanding viewing. Perhaps it would be of more interest to teenagers (or, indeed, parents of teenage girls) but apparently it was stopped after three series due to low viewing figures.

Review copyright 2023 Sue's DVD Reviews