This is 40: Why Family Is the Only Drama That Never Gets Cancelled

Turning 40 made me realise that the family chaos I once rolled my eyes at is the very thing I now look forward to the most. It is how a simple 40th birthday dinner turns into bedlam within minutes.

Picture the scene. A family dinner. Chaos, but organised chaos.

Tali is yanking my arm for the fourth time in three minutes.

“Daddy, I need the toilet.”
“Daddy, Tamara won’t share.”
“Daddy, can you put more mayonnaise on my plate?”

There is already more mayonnaise on her plate than any human should reasonably consume.

Tamara is halfway to tears over a toy that has existed peacefully for months but is suddenly the most contested territory in North London.

And it isn’t just the toddlers.

My fully grown cousins are one passive-aggressive comment away from a fistfight because one of them watched The Holiday with her fiancé and didn’t wait. Yes, we are now in February, and yes, the bickering continues. Some traditions, it turns out, are non-negotiable.

Meanwhile Uncle David has cornered Cousin Rob by the drinks table to explain, with enormous pride, that he got THREE pairs of trousers altered in India for just £2.50!

“You wouldn’t believe it. If you are ever passing through India, on this street, behind the stall in the market with the golden statues. Say my name, they’ll give you a great discount.”

Aunty Gill is flipping homemade burgers with one hand, sticking up balloons with the other, and somehow radiating joy. She’s sweating, she’s juggling, she’s coordinating, but she is absolutely beaming. She loves this. She loves getting us all in one room.

It is now 9pm. Officially past bedtime. And right on cue, the grandparents emerge with chocolate. They don’t care. They are not the ones who will be strapping overtired children into pyjamas at 11pm, negotiating water requests and one-last-hug appeals.

“Dan, you don’t mind if the girls have a little bit, do you?”

Tali and Tamara are already staring at me like this is a life-or-death negotiation. Their eyes are practically bulging out of their sockets. There is no universe in which I am allowed to say no.

My mum and I lock eyes. She smiles at me smugly; she knows exactly what she is doing…

Revenge is a dish best served with sugar. She has waited thirty years for this moment.

And in the middle of it all sits Grandma. The last of her generation. Right bang smack in the middle of what used to be called the ‘kids table’, except the kids are now well into their twenties. She doesn’t say much, I don’t think she will mind me saying she can’t always hear much through the bedlam. But she sits there just soaking it in. The noise. The laughter. The mild arguments. The sugar-fuelled hysteria. She looks slightly overwhelmed, but mostly proud.

Every family has this cast of characters. The organiser. The storyteller. The complainer. The smug grandparent. The exhausted parent. The toy snatching toddler bandit “THAT’s MINE!”

It is hardly surprising that almost every successful television show is built on exactly this formula. Whether it’s The Sopranos, This Is Us or even Little House on the Prairie, writers know one thing: family is the only plot that never runs out of material.

Power. Rivalry. Favouritism. Betrayal. Loyalty. Reconciliation.

Even the Torah knew it first. Long before prestige drama, there was Cain and Abel. Sibling rivalry at its most raw. There was Jacob and Esau, negotiating birth rights and blessings. There was Joseph, thrown into a pit by brothers who couldn’t stand the attention he received. And there was that extraordinary moment when Jacob lifts the veil on his wedding night and realises he’s married Leah, not Rachel. You can almost hear the EastEnders “duff duff duff duff.”

Families will always be dramatic. But there is something special about seeing the same people you share ritual obligation with, the apple-dipping at Rosh Hashanah, the matzah-munching at Pesach, the annual traditions that bring us together whether we feel like it or not.

But this wasn’t a chuppah. It wasn’t a shiva.

We gathered because that is how I wanted to celebrate, not out of obligation, but because these were my eccentric, loud, slightly ridiculous, entirely irreplaceable family. No calendar command. No communal expectation. Just: this is how I want to turn 40.

Somewhere between the chocolate at 9pm and Uncle David’s tailoring economics, I realised something. We don’t grow out of family drama. We grow into our role within it. The names shift. The roles rotate. The mayonnaise increases.

Maybe that is why family dramas never go out of fashion. It is not because writers lack imagination. It is because families haven’t changed in thousands of years. But ultimately our stories stay the same.

And at 40, I have stopped trying to escape it. I have chosen my seat at the table.