Family Tree (TV series)

Family Tree is a mockumentary comedy series co-created by Christopher Guest and Jim Piddock. It first aired on the American cable channel HBO on 12 May 2013, and later on BBC Two in the UK in July 2013. The executive producers were Guest, Piddock, Karen Murphy, Deborah Oppenheimer, and Mario Stylianides. HBO announced the show's cancellation on 23 January 2014.

The story follows Tom Chadwick, played by Chris O'Dowd, a young man looking into his family history. His sister Bea (Nina Conti) communicates through a hand puppet named Monk after a childhood incident with a puffin. Their father Keith (Michael McKean) is obsessed with old British sitcoms, and Keith's wife Luba (Lisa Palfrey) is a highly eccentric Moldovan woman. Tom's relatives include David Chadwick (Christopher Guest), a North Carolinian who claims to have a hereditary vestigial tail and whose wife vanished three years earlier; Guest also plays David's grandfather Phineas, a musician, art collector, actor, and baseball player.

Dr. Al Chadwick (Ed Begley Jr.) is Tom's third uncle, a podiatrist living in Glendale, California, with his wife Kitty (Carrie Aizley). Al is a paranoid conspiracy theorist obsessed with Charles Chadwick leaving America two days after Lincoln's assassination, and he wears a Masonic ring. Kitty, who met Al through a phone number on a public toilet cubicle, is dimwitted and invented flavored enemas. Other Chadwick relatives include Graham (Christian Rodska), a Derbyshire farmer; Ronnie (Adam James), another Derbyshire farmer; Ronnie's wife Emma (Susan Earl); and Marty Schmelff (Kevin Pollak), a store owner in Barstow, California, related through Charles Chadwick's marriage to Rebecca Schmelff. Bob Balaban plays both Melvin Schmelff, Tom's uncle, and his grandfather Ezra, a famous Western film actor.

Other characters include Tom's immature best friend Pete Stupples (Tom Bennett), who works at a London zoo; Glenn Pfister (Jim Piddock), an eccentric South African antique dealer; Pfister's daughter Lucy (Annabel Scholey), a baker who recently ended her engagement; Al's crude neighbor Mike Morton (Fred Willard), a magic lover revealed to be gay and living with his partner Kim (Michael Mantell); Tom's cousin Rick Tillman (Matt Griesser), a Civil War re-enactment enthusiast living in Redondo Beach with his girlfriend Julie (Maria Blasucci); Rick's friend Harvey Krupp (Don Lake); Mildred Budgens (Barbara Bolton), the best friend of Tom's great-aunt Victoria; Chief Running Bull (Graham Greene) and White Feather (Saginaw Grant) from a Barstow Native American reserve; Tom's love interest Ally Keele (Amy Seimetz), whom he meets after defending her in a car accident; and a race course announcer (Ben Farrow).

Guest and Piddock wrote the series, with Guest directing. The dialogue was improvised by the cast. The first season had eight episodes, filmed in London and Los Angeles. The closing credits feature the song "I'm Alone But That's OK" by Ron Sexsmith, written for the series by Guest and Harlan Collins.

Running jokes include oddball inventions, such as a shoe tree that heats or cools shoes, a glass for checking if an elderly person is still breathing, and Kitty's flavored enemas. Awkward dates set up by Pete for Tom involve a woman who believes dinosaurs still exist and another obsessed with bones. Eccentric hobbies include Bea's puppet, Pfister's "landmarks in a bottle" and his habit of checking the website "Is It Fatal?", Julie's owl obsession, and Rick's Civil War re-enactments. Tom's father loves watching fictional British sitcoms like There Goes The Neighbourhood and Move Along, Please!, while Pete enjoys Sherlock Holmes: The New Frontier, a parody of Star Trek.