Here We Go’s Katherine Parkinson on keeping her composure on set of hit sitcom

​The BBC’s acclaimed sitcom Here We Go centres on an ordinary, average, suburbia-based family. The characters fall into familiar tropes – there’s the incompetent dad, an unemployed former Olympic archer, Paul, played by Ghosts’ Jim Howick; the slightly manic, over-enthusiastic mum, Rachel, played by The IT Crowd’s Katherine Parkinson; a sardonic teenage daughter, Amy, played by The School Of Good And Evil’s Freya Parks; a nonchalant son hoping to become a YouTuber, played by Terminator’s Jude Collie; and an ever-present mother-in-law, Sue, played by Gavin and Stacey’s Alison Steadman.

Life for the Jessops is relentlessly chaotic. And they do much to kindle the catastrophe.

The caricature and comedy is anchored both by the brilliant performances of the stellar British cast and the undercurrent of real, unconditional love between the characters. While every episode is punctuated by laughs and absurd sequences, there is depth there too, each family member fully formed. “I just think it’s lovely to see a family all together like that,” says Steadman, 77, on the sitcom’s broad appeal.

“They’ve all got their individual characters and they have their ups and downs, their arguments and the things that go wrong, but then they are a family and they do love each other. There’s a warmth between them. And I think everyone loves that – to have a family sitcom that’s got true warmth.

“There’ve been a lot of family sitcoms over the years and I think sometimes they feel a bit tepid in the humour and a little bit gentle I suppose.

“But I feel like with Here We Go, the humour is quite sharp, it’s quite surprising and I’ve never felt it’s a cosy show. I think it’s quite dangerous, some of the jokes, and really, really funny. And Tom does that brilliantly – he takes the formula and really runs with it and makes it original and surprising.”

Here We Go’s creator is the After Life star and co-creator of Plebs, Tom Basden, who appears in the sitcom as Rachel’s needy, rollercoaster brother Robin.

“Writing a character like Robin is almost a way for me to create the kind of character that I really want to play that no one ever casts me as,” reveals Basden. “In other people’s stuff, I’m generally quite sort of straight and I guess kind of a low status every man is what I often am. And what I really like doing, as with Plebs, is playing quite ridiculous people and just enjoying the absurdity of normal people a bit more.”

Here We Go returns to BBC One on Friday, February 2 at 8.30pm.