All happy families are dull. In fact, to look at these inanely grinning folks you would think that happy families are not only dull but inauthentic. So is each unhappy family interesting in its own way? You might be forgiven for thinking so, because ‘happy = dull’ seems to be the mantra of all drama at the moment. There is relentless dystopia in all TV drama and most serious fiction. There’s just no such thing as a happy marriage – or if there is, you can bet it’s about to be blown apart. Just look at recent dramas Doctor Foster and Apple Tree Yard. Generally if you have a hero or heroine they’re nearly always divorced or separated.
Is happiness always dull? Perhaps like a bad joke it is dull to everyone except the people involved. I can see that dystopianism was a necessary antidote to 50’s saccharine domesticity and – going further back – Victorian sentimentality; but now dystopia has become routine – and I’m bored with it.
Short post today because wordpress is being weird.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 
Thought provoking.
The term “drama” gets banded about a lot in the virtual world Second Life which I visit from time-to-time. Relationships develop there and then, given your point about families being dull, when the “honeymoon period” wears off drama often follows, which seems to be a natural order that brings some spark back, albeit a negative one, with one of the pair drawing attention to themselves in order to fuel their ego.
It seems indeed that when all is dull “we” (in our family) have to pick fault with someone, else there is nothing to talk about.
Also I have been watching what used to be “Top Gear” (but is now Grand Tour) and the team play on this idea of disagreeing about which car is best, or how best to achieve something, or if one of the trio get into a spot of bother the others avoid helping… all the while pretending to be an unhappy family it seems, which must be what works best for entertainment purposes.
I didn’t know Top Gear was called that! Yes, it does seem to be nearly universal now. I’m not sure how (or if) happiness can be made interesting, but I am very tired of ubiquitous dystopia
I think the way out of drama is to have constructive hobbies and interests; they surely provide a positive topic of conversation… well to those that are interested.
True, though I wasn’t talking about ‘real-life’ dullness, more the way relationships are portrayed in drama. I find many happy families irl engaging and funny: such as the family portrayed in ‘Further Back in Time for Dinner.’ I think happy marriages used to be the groundwork for dramas to happen elsewhere – or they were perhaps threatened before reaching a resolution. This did happen in one drama where a married couple, played by Derek Jacobi and Anne Reed, provided a stable backdrop for the chaos of other lives in ‘Last Tango in Halifax’.