History Series / TwoPointFourChildren

* IndulgentFantasySegue: When Bill's sister-in-law Tina shows up at a catering event she's doing in "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", Bill imagines choking her and shoving her face into some food to PsychoStrings.

* HiddenDepths: Despite his standard characterisation, Ben is always able to provide emotional support when Bill needs it. And of the two during any genuine emergency or crisis, he actually manages to stay calmer and react better than she does.

* InternalReveal: Although Angelo's death is revealed to the audience at the end of "I'm Going Slightly Mad", Bill doesn't find out until she hinds his obituary on an old newspaper in the later "One Night in Bangkok".

** In ""The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe", Rona thinks that she is pregnant after she begins having WackyCravings. It's actually diabetes which is leading to them.

* GenderBlenderName: Bill (full name Wilhelmina) is a girl with a typically masculine nickname.

* ArcWords: Bill's recurring dream of a biker telling her to stay out of "MIA". The dream was cut short; it was supposed to say "Miami", where she was caught in a hurricane in a later episode. In fact MIA is the three-letter airport code for Miami International, and it only occurs in one or two episodes. Two points don't make an arc, although since the seasons are only six episodes long, two episodes is a sizeable chunk.

* {{Gasshole}}: Rufus, the dog owned by the neighbours next door. There is a reason he's called "Farty" by David - he has a tendency to fart a lot.

%% * MagicRealism

* CruiseEpisode: In "Two Years Before The Mast", Tina has booked herself on a cruise. Chaos ensues when the ship departs with the Porter family, who were moving the luggage and had come aboard the ship to say goodbye, inadvertedly joining in the cruise.

%% * DropInCharacter - Rona and Christine

%% * HairTriggerTemper: Christine.

%% * MaybeMagicMaybeMundane

* AwayInAManger: Happens in an episode where Rona finds an abandoned baby at Christmas.

* ThePrecariousLedge: Bill and Rona become stuck on a ledge with Bill's aunt after going out there to rescue her (she threatened to jump if they called the fire brigade, since she was afraid of the authorities sending her to a retirement home.) The ledge then starts to crumble, leaving them stranded with no way to get back. Luckily, the whole building is so shoddily constructed that they are saved when Bill stumbles backwards and breaks through the paper-thin wall.
%% * ReallyGetsAround: Rona

** An episode where Bill is critical of David's new friend whom she sees as a LowerClassLout, but becomes aware over the course of the episode that this perception is based on stereotypes and he's a decent kid from a struggling family.
** Rona finds an abandoned baby and takes him in, but has to learn (through personal experience and Bill's advice) that just because she wants a child doesn't entitle her to one.

* CruisingEpisode: In "Two Years Before The Mast", Tina has booked herself on a cruise. Chaos ensues when the ship departs with the Porter family, who were moving the luggage and had come aboard the ship to say goodbye, inadvertedly joining in the cruise.

* AnAeso: One of the Christmas specials ended with Bill giving a speech to the audience about how easy it is to become homeless.

* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo - [[spoiler:"Aunt" Pearl]] turns out to be [[spoiler:Rona's]] real mother, discovered when [[spoiler: Rona has to provide her birth certificate in order to have her house's tenancy transferred into her own name.]]

* AllJustADream - Actually happened twice - "Fortuosity" in Series 4 and "Fame" in Series 8.
* {{Alucard}} - A variant in one episode where Bill and Ben come to suspect their neighbour, Mrs Crudaal, is a vampire after realising that her name is an anagram of Dracula.
* ArcWords - Bill's recurring dream of a biker telling her to stay out of "MIA". The dream was cut short; it was supposed to say "Miami", where she was caught in a hurricane in a later episode. In fact MIA is the three-letter airport code for Miami International, and it only occurs in one or two episodes. Two points don't make an arc, although since the seasons are only six episodes long, two episodes is a sizeable chunk.
* AwayInAManger - Happens in an episode where Rona finds an abandoned baby at Christmas.
* BrandX - the video game ''Ninja Badger''.
* BrattyTeenageDaughter - Jenny.
* BumblingDad
* TheCasanova
* ChristmasEpisode - Five of them! All of which end with [[SuddenMusicalEnding a bizarre Broadway-esque musical number]].
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}} - All the characters were prone to this, but especially Ben, who believed that ''Series/{{Thunderbirds}}'' was real until Christine told him the truth - when he was 36.
* CousinOliver - Declan, the Porters' foster child, who was also a SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute for the departing Jenny.
* CutShort - By the illness of Ben's actor in 1999 (he emigrated to Australia after a cancer diagnosis and died in 2000).
* DeadAllAlong - It is strongly implied that [[spoiler: Bill's mysterious motorcycle guy]] was this. Bill [[spoiler: sees his obituary]] in a stack of old newspapers she was going to throw away. The end of the first episode of the second series shows a TV news report (which Bill misses, due to being asleep) reporting on the accident that killed him. This implies he was alive during the first series.
* DeadpanSnarker - All the characters have their moments, especially Bill and Ben.
* DeadPetSketch - In "The Deep", Ben has volunteered the Porters to look after Leonard and Dora Grimes' pets while they are on holiday in Switzerland without telling Bill (as they have a poor track record at looking after their pets). With the Grimeses about to board their return flight, they go next door to find a pond full of dead fish which they end up having to replace at great expense from a specialty shop in Reading. When the Grimeses return, they are surprised to see the fish looking so well - they were sure they had died days ago. The pets the Porters were actually asked to look after were Leonard's racing pigeons - which Bill has accidentally suffocated by closing their hutch.
* DeathByDespair - David contracts tetanus and goes into a coma. At the hospital, he's visited by the ghost of Bill's biker friend, who says it's up to David whether to return to the world of the living. David almost chooses not to because of this trope, but ultimately decides to stay when Ben arrives at that moment and says he loves David.
* DisasterDominoes
* DomCom
* DropInCharacter - Rona and Christine
* FakingTheDead - In one episode, Jake dies suddenly and leaves a will demanding that Ben arrange a ''Franchise/StarTrek''-themed funeral for him. It turns out he faked the whole thing to humiliate Ben.

* TheFriendNobodyLikes - Ben's sister Tina.
* GenderBlenderName - Bill (full name Wilhelmina)

* HairTriggerTemper - Christine.
* HiddenDepths - Despite his standard characterisation, Ben is always able to provide emotional support when Bill needs it. And of the two during any genuine emergency or crisis, he actually manages to stay calmer and react better than she does.
* {{Homage}}
* ImpossiblyDeliciousFood - The addictively delicious "Drool" chocolate bars.
* LowerClassLout - One episode involved Bill trying to discourage David's friendship with one, until she finds out how poor the boy's family is and how his mother is struggling as a single parent.
* MagicRealism
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane
* MoodWhiplash - Frequently. The biggest example is probably the second-to-last episode of Season 4, which ''almost'' ends on the triumphant note of Jenny winning the school talent contest thanks to Ben and David helping her by dressing as Film/TheBluesBrothers and singing "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love". Then they get home and find the house has burnt down.
* MisterSeahorse - PlayedForLaughs in one episode where Bill buys a pregnancy test but then realises that one of the tester sticks is missing. It turns out that Ben took it, used it, and now thinks he is pregnant.
* MrsRobinson - possibly. One episode was centred around Bill reading David's diary and becoming convinced he was in a relationship with an older woman ... then learning the woman was his drama teacher and he was appearing in a production of ''Film/TheGraduate'' ... and ''then'' at the very end, he thanks the teacher for "everything. "No, ''[[TeacherStudentRomance everything]]''".
* NoLongerWithUs - When David is rushed to hospital with tetanus, a doctor comes into the waiting room to tell the Porters that "we've lost him." They're devastated, but it turns out the hospital has ''literally'' lost David - due to a computer failure, they can't see which ward he's been taken to.
* NotSoAboveItAll - Bill may be the only sane woman, but she does lose it when things get too much, plus every so often she proves she can be just as unusual as the rest of her family.
* NotWhatItLooksLike - One episode has Bill notice some men loading a TV into their van from the house next door, whose occupants are on holiday. She suspects the men are burglars, and she and Ben end up breaking into the house just to check that it's really empty. Then they realize that the burglars can get in easily through the now-broken window, so Bill and Ben decide to take all valuables over to their own house for safety. This doesn't look at all good when the police arrive (although Bill thinks that several plates of her sausage rolls [[ThroughHisStomach made the explanation more believable.]])
* ObstructiveBureaucrat - Dawn, the officious bank employee that Bill keeps getting stuck with.
* ThePrecariousLedge - Bill and Rona become stuck on a ledge with Bill's aunt after going out there to rescue her (she threatened to jump if they called the fire brigade, since she was afraid of the authorities sending her to a retirement home.) The ledge then starts to crumble, leaving them stranded with no way to get back. Luckily, the whole building is so shoddily constructed that they are saved when Bill stumbles backwards and breaks through the paper-thin wall.
* ReallyGetsAround - Rona
* RunawayBride - Rona runs out of her own wedding after seeing all her ex-boyfriends gathered in the church reminds her what she would miss out on if she got married. It's mentioned to be at least the second or third time she has done this.
* ShutUpKiss - Ben tries this on Bill when she wakes up panicking on the morning of an important catering job. It doesn't work.
* SitcomArchNemesis - Jake the Klingon to Ben.
* SpecialEditionTitle - for the Christmas episodes.
* [[SpiritualSuccessor Spiritual Predecessor]] - Considered by some to have paved the way for the similarly-themed ''Series/MyFamily''.
* StandardizedSitcomHousing: the setting is what could be called ''The Creator/{{BBC}} Semi-Dee'' - the universal semi-detached house found universally all over Britain, and since the 1950's the standard set for BBC family sitcoms of the ''Series/TerryAndJune'' genre. Although ''2point4 Children'' [[GenreSavvy knowingly sends up]] the twee and dated assumptions of the London-based sitcom about a middle-class family, living humdrum comfortable lives in nice parts of suburbia.

* ThemeNaming - Appears to have been done in Bill's family since she, her mother Bette and aunt Belle all have very similar-sounding names.
* TomboyishName - Bill
* YouDidntAsk - After Ben gets disappointed that their "ghostbusting" equipment recorded absolutely no paranormal activity, David tells him to be patient since it can take years to work. Ben asks why David didn't mention this before, leading David to say "You didn't ask!"