Cameras capture family life on TV

An "unremarkable" Kent family have let cameras into their home for a fly-on-the-wall series about modern life.

Redundant businessman Simon Hughes, his charity worker wife Jane and their four children, from Canterbury, were filmed over 100 days and nights for the show.

The family's semi-detached house was fitted with 21 wall cameras to provide 5,000 hours of material to be edited for next month's Channel 4 programme.

The neighbours moved out so their home could be used as a production gallery.

The show captures the routine of the Hughes daily life, from slumping on the sofa to the parents' incessant squabbling with their nightclubbing teenage daughter.

'Wear pyjamas'

The couple, who have been married 22 years, are parents to Jessica, 22, Emily, 19, Charlotte, 17, and Tom, 14.

They are also grandparents to Jessica's child with her fiance Pat Lee.

The series, called The Family, comes 34 years after the Paul Watson documentary of the same name credited with inventing fly-on-the-wall TV.

"The cameras didn't change our behaviour at all, except Simon had to wear his pyjamas," said Mrs Hughes.

Mr Hughes, a former business development manager at a property company, said the family gradually became more confident about the process.

"We came to respect what [the programme-makers] wanted to do - show that behind the closed door aspect of family life, how things are resolved, the love that's there in that family life," he said.

"Also, it's a fantastic thing to pass on to later generations of the Hughes."

Channel 4 chose the Hughes family after approaching people in the street, visiting 6th forms, trawling shopping centres and using mail shots.

Simon Dickson, Channel 4's deputy head of documentaries, said it deliberately shunned eccentric families.

"We were not trying to find a family that symbolises Britain because no family can do that," he said.

"But we didn't want to find the Partridge family, the extremes... because there's enough drama, conflict resolution without that.

"When we met the Hughes family we were delighted."

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