Poszepszynski Family radio show (1972-1988, Poland)

Original title

Rodzina Poszepszyńskich

Episode time

30 minutes

Language

Polish

Polish radio shows Comedy shows

The Poszepszynski family is not a typical family, but in many ways it is - grandpa Jacek spends his days reminiscent about his times in the army during the Russo-Japanese War that he spent in Manchuria and bores everyone around with stories from his past, his daughter Maryla works in dissecting-room and takes care of the home (sort-of takes care), her husband Grzegorz is a hard-working... well, working man, and their child, son Maurycy, is on a verge of being classic case of pyromania. Their life is not easy, their life is not exciting, their life is full of events that can hardly be called usual.

The Poszepszynski Family was created as a parody of the popular radio soap opera, The Matysiaks. While the Matysiak family represented all the typical working-class characters and situations, the Poszepszynski family was the complete opposite - nothing in their life was ordinary, nothing was typical, nothing was as you would expect it to be. The humour was drawn from the fact that they were at the bottom of society, their decisions and things that happened to them were so unusual, but also through the absurd and a bit of dark sense of humour of the authors.

The show was presented in 6 series between 1972 and 1998, but they were divided rather chaotically - the first series contained 36 episodes, the second 21, the third only 4 (due to the introduction of Martial law in Poland caused by the fall of communist system), fourth was made after few years of hiatus with only 5 episodes, while fifth contained 60 and sixth again only 4 episodes. The death of one of the creators, Jacek Janczarski, in 2000 finally closed the story of the Poszepszynski family.