At Home with the Snails

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At Home with the Snails
Genre	Black comedy
Running time	30 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Languages	English
Home station	BBC Radio 4
Starring	Geoffrey Palmer Angela Thorne Gerard Foster Miranda Hart Debra Stephenson
Writers	Gerard Foster
Producers	Jane Berthoud
Air dates	26 June 2001 to 8 August 2002
No. of series	2
No. of episodes	8
Audio format	Stereophonic sound

At Home with the Snails is a somewhat surreal BBC Radio 4 comedy, written by Gerard Foster, about a British dysfunctional family. The cast includes Geoffrey Palmer as George Fisher, Angela Thorne as Beverly Fisher, Gerard Foster as Alex, Miranda Hart as Rose, and Debra Stephenson as Hosanna. It was produced by Jane Berthoud.

At Home with the Snails is often repeated on BBC 7.

The story features Alex's obsession with snails, killing them, collecting them, having sexual desires for them and by season two, even attempting to turn into one. In the second season his mother and father (George and Beverly) decide to fake their own deaths and spy on their son in order to write a book about his descent into madness. The story explored themes of family, sexual preference and aging in a humorous yet thought-provoking style.

The characters are all mentally deranged, but only aware of each others problems not their own.

George is a pompous academic who puts his obscure, pretentious and pointless pontificating above all else including his family. He encourages Alex's snail obsession to get material for his books. Beverly, his sexually frustrated wife makes "nice things", such as a 200ft tall "family mug tree". In one episode she develops racial dysphoria, and starts painting her face with boot polish, believing that she is a black person trapped in a white body. Their daughter Rose has her heart in the wrong place - jammed under her armpit. She runs a confectionery shop selling "chocolate excretions" and "jelly war babies".