Families are many things, and most of those things are either not talked about or occasionally, wincingly, confessed.
Modern Family has successfully tapped into this rich vein of humour, and won lots of awards and made stunning amounts of money.
Series six of the show returns to Prime on Friday.
The Dunphy family, of Phil, Claire, Luke and Haley, are having a fabulous summer, are getting along terrifically, and have an endless supply of plums without one bad one to spoil the bunch.
But when their older daughter Alex arrives home, the magic is immediately lost, the plums go bad, and the family has to face up to the apparent truth that their daughter has ruined their summer.
One of television's best people, Ed O'Neill as Jay Pritchett, is concerning his massively-beautiful-but-demanding-wife Gloria Pritchett (Sofia Vergara), by wearing old-man's glasses, and not taking an effort with his attire.
Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), meanwhile is tiring of partner Cam's (Eric Stonestreet) romantic excess, after the two return home from their honeymoon.
Quite funny.
It's probably not fair to tell you about shows that have been going for five weeks and are about to end, but then nothing is linear any more; shows exist on lots of platforms you have or more likely don't have, and are available later if you feel up to paying for them.
Catastrophe, a British sitcom starring Irish woman Sharon Horgan as Sharon Morris, and American Rob Delaney as Rob Norris, follows the pair's cleverly amusing struggles after she becomes pregnant following a brief affair while he is in the United Kingdom on business.
I've been meaning to tell you, but I only found it at episode two, and now it's about to finish on Sky's SoHo channel at episode six.
Catastrophe is what the average deeply complicated life would be if your partner was just as funny as you, and you both had brilliant writers to script your life.
The pair battle with difficult and insane friends and family, a high risk of producing a baby with Down Syndrome, and a host of small, embarrassing secrets, all done with some dark and slightly outrageous humour.
Catastrophe is truly great, and luckily has been picked up for a second series.
Also, it stars Princess Leia, aka Carrie Fisher, as a very unpleasant mother to Rob.
Meanwhile, people whose taste I have at least limited respect for keep raving about Vikings, on Spark's subscription video on demand service Lightbox.
Apparently it's about Vikings, a race of Scandinavian types who briefly made the world a place bikies might happily dream about on a quiet Saturday - but with boats.
Imagine that.
- Charles Loughrey
