Thande
Donor
I'm actually familiar with My Family, and have been for quite some time (it made the transatlantic crossing early in its run, back when all three kids were still regulars). There's almost an "uncanny valley" affect to it - neither truly "British" nor "American" in tone or sensibilities. The limited number of episodes per season is, without question, the biggest disappointment. The whole reason to have a team of writers is to enable many episodes per season! I Love Lucy had five writers and they churned out 39 episodes in each season, once upon a time. Meanwhile, My Family just barely makes it to 100 overall after a decade of trying? Pathetic.
Nobody would make a British show that has that many episodes though, our licensing etc just aren't set up for it. I remember it being controversial when it was announced that the revived Doctor Who would have as many as 13 episodes per series--everyone could tell this was so they could try and sell it to America (2 series = 1 American season) and people were up in arms about it. (Of course, the Doctor Who fanbase have never been known for calm, reasonable behaviour, but still ).
Obviously they do show American shows that last that long over here but usually they go out in a format that lets each episode stand alone, and broadcasters are generally leery about those with a story arc. (I remember when DS9 started developing one, the BBC started doing its own recaps before each episode AS WELL AS the "Last Time on Star Trek DS9" one from the show itself, just because they didn't think anyone would actually tune in every week for that long). The BBC did make a big thing about showing "Heroes" a few years ago, and "24" was briefly big, but the people who like those shows generally just buy the DVD anyway so you don't see them very much.
This is somewhat counter to stereotype, of course, because everyone thinks Americans have a short attention span--but then I remember some American executive in the early fifties claiming that television would never catch on in the USA because "the American family does not have the attention span to sit still watching a box for an hour". I love that, because it's a totally logical prediction, yet we know from our perspective that it makes no sense. Over here the TV broadcasters seem to think people have the memory of goldfish when it comes to showing repeats all the time, especially for children's shows (there are kids' TV programmes where they only ever made 12 episodes and then just repeat them endlessly for 25 years...)