Barbara is a Dom Com which aired on ITV from 1999 to 2003, with a pilot first airing as part of the Comedy Firsts series in 1995. It focuses on Barbara (Gwen Taylor), the dominant doctor's receptionist with a sharp tongue. Her family includes her mild-mannered husband Ted (Sam Kelly); their twenty-something son Neil (Benedict Sandiford); their long-suffering daughter Linda (Elizabeth Carling), who is married to Martin Pond (Mark Benton), a TV presenter who usually makes a fool of himself, and her appearance-obsessed sister Jean (Sherrie Hewson), who eventually gets married to Phil (John Arthur). Also part of the cast is Doreen (Madge Hindle), who frequently tells Barbara of the bizarre adventures she gets into with her unseen husband, Clive. The majority of the humor focuses on Barbara's strong behavior and the rest of the family's struggles to cope with her, although there is an occasional use of surreal humor.
The show is most notable for being one of the highest-rated sitcoms for ITV at the time, with its first episode pulling in 9.80 million viewers.
Tropes in this series:
- Accidental Murder: "Birthday" features Ted fearing that he has killed an unseen character called Colin because he had taken his garden strimmer, leaving him with a garden claw that Barbara believes he shouldn't have been using. Thankfully, he's told otherwise - that in fact, the man died via frozen lavatory contents from an airplane dropping onto him.
- Ambiguous Ending: So who shot Barbara in the closing moments of the show? Whilst motives are given to her relatives during the course of the final episode, the identity of the assailant is never shown.
- Apology Gift: In "Amour", Jean is led to believe that Phil is not serious in their romance after she finds him with a waitress, so Linda suggests making it up to her by buying Jean a gift. Phil's present is an enormous nylon cat, which eventually works.
- Baby Carriage: In "Fox", Linda tries to reassure Martin that having Barbara be a childminder for George would be fine... only for the baby carrier they think is holding him to go hurtling past them and right into a nearby river. Thankfully, Barbara was holding George at the time, although it took a while for them to discover this.
- Baby's First Words: A variant comes in "Neighbours" when Linda tells Martin that he's missed George's first sentence - "Where the hell is Daddy?"
- Basement-Dweller: Neil, who is living with his parents well into his 20s. It would seem that he is relying on leaving via marriage, but one of the things he is bad at is keeping girlfriends. An attempt is finally made to get him out during the events of "Baby", but the state of his girlfriend's apartment lead to Barbara interfering in his life and his return back home.
- Big Storm Episode: "Flood", which focuses on a flood messing with Ted and Barbara's plans to sell their house.
- Birthday Episode: "Cottage" focuses on Barbara and her family and friends going to a cottage for her 60th birthday, only for things to go absolutely wrong.
- Black Comedy: Considering its premise as a fairly straightforward Dom Com, a surprising amount of dark humor is presented within, including Mummies at the Dinner Table, a character falling dead from a block of frozen urine from an airplane dropping on their head, and a friend of Ted's stuffing his dead wife.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Ted goes through a lot of abuse in the series, including getting carjacked by Star Trek impersonators and getting paint splashed over him, to say nothing about the fact that he has the dominating Barbara as a wife.
- Martin undergoes a lot of suffering, including getting chained to a parking meter, getting stalked by a fan, and struggling to get enough sleep thanks to his son crying non-stop.
- Chained to a Bed: Barbara encounters Neil chained to the bed in "Kirsty" after returning home early from a holiday. In this case, it was the work of a kinky girlfriend called Kirsty.
- Christmas Episode: "Neighbours" is set around the Christmas season and is about Barbara and Ted dealing with annoying neighbors over the period.
- Cliffhanger: The final episode of Series 3, "Who Shot Barbara?" ends with Barbara getting shot by an unknown assailant. Did she survive? We'll never know, as the show was canceled after that.
- Creepy Crossdresser: In "Queenie", Ted is attacked by several cross-dressers who are pissed at the amount of money that they're made to paid for the cab and has to be saved by Jean.
- Criminal Doppelgänger: "Coffee" reveals that Ted has one in the form of Todd, who not only looks very much like him, but also shares a career in driving and his love for a Snapple. However, Todd is a criminal, wanted for a ram-raid to a chemist shop, and this leads to Ted's temporary arrest.
- Cut Short: The cancellation of the series leads to several plot points left unresolved, such as the mystery of who shot Barbara and whether she even survived and the final outcome of Linda's attempts to conceive with the help of IVF.
- Dreaded Kids' Party Entertainer Job: In, "Kids", a children's party clown entertainer provokes Martin so much that Martin assaults him severely enough to give the clown mild concussion. The clown makes a later appearance in the episode intending to get his revenge on Martin, although this is never shown on-screen.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The pilot episode, first airing four years before the first episode, is slightly different from the rest of the series.
- Barbara's (and by extension Ted's) surname is spelled "Liversage" rather than "Liversidge". She was also depicted as much more of a My Beloved Smother than the more simply sharp-tongued woman she would become in the proper series.
- Martin is depicted as a chef rather than a TV reporter and is played by Glen Davies rather than Mark Benton. His (and by extension Linda's) surname is also given as "Benson" rather than "Pond".
- Neil is outright non-existent.
- George is depicted as having already been born, with Barbara being tasked to look after him whilst Martin and Linda are away at his job interview. The first series however has him not born yet, with one plot thread being about the pregnancy that leads to his birth.
- Elderly Future Fantasy: At the end of "Mum", Neil, who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, imagines a nightmarish future where he, now a middle-aged man, still lives with his now elderly parents and is still getting dumped by girlfriends after meeting his mother.
- Epunymous Title: An In-Universe example comes with "Pond Life", starring Martin Pond. When Martin is fired for sleeping on the job in "Kids", his short-lived successors end up continuing the puns, including "Knight Life" (starring Barry Knight), "Bird Life" (starring Ken Bird), and "Glove Life" (starring Emma Glove). Notably, these puns are weaker and more forced, hinting at the presenters' inferiority compared to Martin in the news department.
- Eye Cam: When Linda returns home in "Crime" to see Martin in a Not What It Looks Like situation with two women, it cuts to her POV through an eye-cam as she corners Martin with the intent on putting a burnt turkey on his head.
- Finding a Bra in Your Car: In "Massage", Linda goes through Martin's anorak pockets and finds a strange set of underpants. She naturally believes that Martin is cheating on her, despite Martin attempting to explain that it was a strange crank who keeps putting pants in his pockets.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral":
- "Birthday" features Ted and Barbara going to Colin's funeral, watching as the funeral hearse containing Colin's body diverts to have a car wash.
- "Kids" opens up at the funeral for a man named Les, which is interrupted firstly by a stray football being kicked into view, then by the boy who kicked it asking for it back, then a kite, and then the stray football being kicked back in again. At the end of the episode, a sky-diving Barbara ends up accidentally parachuting into another funeral.
- In "Honeymoon", Ted accidentally crashes into a funeral cortege, injuring several of the mourners and pallbearers there, and ends up having to drive some of the grieving relatives, as well as the coffin, to the crematorium.
- Game Show Appearance: "Tyres" has a plot of one of Ted becoming a phone-a-friend for one of his pals going on to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Unfortunately, a practice run leads to Ted screwing up all the answers, leading to a Nightmare Sequence where he imagines himself failing his family whilst on the show itself. He ends up not getting the chance to be a phone-a-friend, due to him spending the day driving the disabled owner of a car whose tires Barbara had slashed up to Scotland and falling asleep as a result.
- The Ghost: Doreen often mentions her husband, Clive, but he never makes an appearance. The closest we get is in "Massage", where he appears as the back half of a pantomime horse (hidden of course by the front half).
- Girl of the Week: Neil is never seen with the same girlfriend in each episode, with each girlfriend usually breaking up with him by the end.
- Grumpy Old Man:
- Queenie is a female version of the trope, being in her 70s and quite complaining and fussy, to the point that it eventually causes Barbara to snap and rant at her. Her return appearance in Series 3 even has her be expelled from her nursing home for setting fire to a commode.
- Barbara herself counts, having turned 60 by the end of Series 3 and being cranky enough that none of the neighbors like her.
- Harpoon Gun: The start of "Tyres" sees Neil cleaning a harpoon gun, which he accidentally fires into a turkey being prepared in the kitchen. Barbara later comes across Ted harpooned to the sofa, leading her to tell Neil to get rid of it.
- Henpecked Husband: Whilst Ted occasionally stands up for his wife, he usually prefers to remain quiet and take the abuse.
- Insurance Fraud: When their house is flooded in "Flood" Neil and Ted try to take advantage of their insurance policy by throwing stuff they don't want into the water. This lasts until Barbara points out that they have a maximum limit of £5000 on their insurance.
- It Kind of Looks Like a Face: The first proper episode of the series, "Birthday", is about Barbara cooking a cake that the others think looks like Judi Drench (although Barbara believes that it looks more like John Kepley).
- Law of Inverse Fertility: In "Baby", Linda and Martin try having a baby again, but have a great struggle doing it. After going to the doctors, it is found that Linda is no longer able to have children, with IVF not even apparently a great option due to something involving their son George's birth. They do eventually decide to do IVF, but there is no follow-up on this plot before the series ends.
- Manchild: Neil is rather childish despite being in his early 20s, having difficulties holding a job and a steady girlfriend and watching children shows such as Scooby-Doo.
- Meat-O-Vision: When everyone is stranded outdoors wit little food or a car to drive around in, Neil begins hallucinating Phil as a giant turkey in "Cottage".
- Men Can't Keep House: "Crime" shows that of the two between Martin and Linda, Linda is the one to keep house, with Martin being incapable of doing any household chores or cleaning properly whilst she's gone.
- Mistaken for Cheating:
- In "Massage", Linda accuses Martin of having an affair after finding underpants in his anorak, despite Martin's complaints to the contrary. It turns out to be a madwoman putting the pants, having been motivated by a crush on Martin.
- In "Valentine", Martin gets a new co-presenter in Wendy, and he is accused of having romantic feelings for her by his wife Linda after she sees them on-screen, contrary to his arguments that he does not actually like Wendy.
- Morning Sickness: Linda falls heavily sick during the events of "Birthday" and is constantly vomiting, which considering The Reveal in "Friends" that she's pregnant, serves as Foreshadowing.
- My Beloved Smother: Barbara has her moments towards her children. In the pilot episode alone, she's annoyed at the idea of her daughter Linda going to Wales to be with Martin at his new job and is pleased when she discovers through slightly dirty methods that Martin isn't going to get the job.
- New Baby Episode: "Scattering" features Linda going into labor whilst the family is away scattering the ashes of Barbara and Jean's mother Gladys. Thanks to a stalker of Martin's causing Martin to change the locks, Linda is unable to get to her house to give birth, and ends up doing so in Barbara's house instead.
- No Longer with Us: When Martin is awaiting for a potential job with Sky in "Birthday", he is told that Greg is "not with us anymore". Naturally, he thinks that this means he is dead, until the woman telling him this reassures him that he has been just sacked.
- Parent-Preferred Suitor: According to Barbara in the pilot, she didn't want Linda to marry Martin, but rather Stewart, as Stewart is at least a local lad.
- Pilot: A pilot episode initially aired as part of the ITV series Comedy Firsts in 1995, called "Job". It notably has some differences between it and the proper series, like character surnames and occupations.
- Pop the Tires: In "Tyres", Barbara, pissed at the amount of people Obfuscating Disability to take advantage of disabled parking near her, slashes their tyres as revenge. Trouble comes when she discovers that she might have slashed the car tyres of a genuinely disabled person.
- Really Gets Around: Jean is rather sex-crazed, with Barbara once describing her libido as being the size of a reservoir. "Amour" features her recounting a fairly long list of boyfriends, including twins which she didn't realize were twins until she turned on the lights one time.
- Second Hand Story Telling: Doreen's main trait is about her telling Barbara in detail the bizarre adventures she has with her husband, including becoming friends with a three-legged squirrel. None of these events are ever shown on-screen however.
- Second Love: Phil is apparently this to Jean, as she briefly mentions marrying a guy named Roy which lasted until he had heart failure. Phil is apparently also this, having previously had a wife called Heather who became so bored of him that she tried to kill herself.
- Shout-Out: "Friends" features a re-creation of the opening of Friends featuring the cast.
- Show Within a Show: Martin hosts a segment on the fictional news program Scene Up North called Pond Life, usually involving him somehow screwing up the segment.
- Silent Treatment: "Friends" features Susan deciding not to speak to Barbara until she apologizes for insulting her [Susan's] husband. She only relents when Barbara actually apologizes, realizing that she would likely never see her grandson if she didn't.
- The Slacker: Neil's greatest desire seems to be to do nothing more than slob around all day and he gets annoyed when told by others that he can't do so in the morning.
- Stag Party: "Amour" features Martin going to a stag party for a friend, ending with him becoming tied to a parking meter.
- Staircase Tumble: This happens to Queenie in "Queenie" when she trips on the stairs and goes tumbling down the stairs. Whilst she ends up fine, no one bothers to check up on her until Neil shows up.
- Taxidermy Is Creepy: Frank in "Guy Fawkes", whose interest in taxidermy extends to stuffing his own dead wife, displaying her in their living room, and reacting as if she was still alive. Naturally, Ted and Barbara are creeped out. It even leads to a creepy case of Mummies at the Dinner Table when Frank brings her over for dinner.
- The Unapologetic: Barbara is not a woman who usually apologizes for her behaviour. When she realizes she has to apologize to Martin so that she can see her upcoming grandson in "Friends", she finds it very difficult and admits it's a strange thing for her to do.
- Valentine's Day Episode: "Valentine" is set on Valentine's Day, and features Ted, Martin. and Phil realizing that they forgot to get their respective spouses something for the holiday, leading to Convenience Store Gift Shopping.
- Vetinari Job Security: In "Kids", Martin is fired from his role after sleeping on the job, and the program he was part of subsequently struggles and fails to find a suitable successor for him before eventually being forced to rehire him.
- Wedding Episode: "Wedding" focuses on the marriage between Phil and Jean, which naturally goes wrong.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Downplayed, as Barbara isn't that much of a git and she was seemingly only injured, but "Who Shot Barbara?" revolves around the fact that most of her friends, family members, and neighbors have motives, mainly centered around Barbara's bad behavior, which implicates them in her shooting.
- Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour: "Amour" begins with Barbara and Ted being woken up at 3:30 in the morning by their alarm clock, much to Ted's annoyance. It's soon revealed that Barbara set the clock deliberately because she wanted to call Donkersly building services and tear them a new one for waking her up at 6:30 in the morning for the past fortnight. Not only does it not work, but they get back at her by blocking her door.
