A new series of The Family starts on Channel 4 tomorrow. This year the classic fly-on-the-wall documentary, which first aired on the BBC in 1974 and could be blamed for spawning the horror of reality TV, is focusing on three generations of a Sikh family living in Windsor.

The Grewals have been filmed over eight weeks, with 37 microphones and 28 cameras following their every move around their five-bedroom, pebble-dashed home — and to judge from e-mails I have been sent in response to the pre-publicity, a backlash is brewing.

There seems to be concern that the series will propound stereotypical and negative views of Asian families. Having watched a DVD of the first episode, I can report that such worries are not misplaced.

The Grewals live as a large extended family under the Heathrow flight path. They have at least one German saloon parked on the drive, and the first episode focuses almost entirely on that most clichéd of Asian themes — marriage, arranged and otherwise, with the series building up to a big, traditional Indian wedding. The only way they could be more stereotypical would be if they ran a corner shop.

The show also tackles several negative issues, including caste discrimination (Shay, a recruitment consultant in the City, is shunned by her family because Mandeep, her chosen husband, is from a different caste) and the misogynistic nature of Punjabi culture. Indeed, Arvinder, the father of the family, makes Ali G look like a new man: he doesn’t know where the plates are kept in his house because he claims that the kitchen is no place for a man, and he communicates with his wife Sarbjit almost entirely through remarks such as “I want cup of tea”; “gimme the food”; “bring the tea”; “I asked for jam on this . . . silly fool” and “you are snoring like a pig”.

At one point it seems as if he is finally about to pay his wife a compliment, when he recalls that she was “a very pretty girl” when they were married — but he wrecks it by adding “not like today”. At another point he says: “She is a loving person and I am glad that she is my wife and I care. I have to care because in the end she is the only one who cooks for me.”

But having said that, the show is also brilliant. Why? Because stereotypes exist for a reason: they are often rooted in truth. Asians do have an obsession with BMWs, and the question of marriage dominates Asian culture.

For Punjabis in particular, a wedding is more than just an occasion when two people agree to commit to one another in a spirit of idiotic optimism. It is an occasion when two families are united, an expression of a mother and father’s devotion to their child, an exposition of izzat (honour) — that most intense and problematic of Punjabi feelings — and the fulfilment of a sacred duty. The numbers tell the story: Sikhs have the second highest rate of marriage of all religious groups in Britain (59.2 per cent, after Hindus at 60.8 per cent), the lowest proportion of people who have never married (27.8 per cent) and the average wedding costs more than £25,000.

If this series of The Family tackles some negative issues, it is because, despite what various community leaders would like everyone to believe, we do have problems. There is a tendency, perhaps because representation of ethnic minorities in the media has traditionally been rare, to interpret any commentary as criticism. Hanif Kureishi suffered from it when My Beautiful Laundrette became the focus of protests in New York from people who claimed that there was no such thing as a gay Pakistani. Monica Ali had similar problems with the film version of Brick Lane — and, on a much smaller scale, I have been getting flak for my family memoir, with Indarjit Singh, a Sikh who sometimes does the Thought for the Day slot on Radio 4, complaining repeatedly that my book is “an insult to the Sikh faith” because I describe cutting my hair and living with a non-Sikh girl. But whoever said I was a representative of the Sikh faith? I was just trying to tell my family’s story.

Which is the reason why the forthcoming series of The Family is so good. It tackles a range of heavy Asian issues but the themes are secondary to the fact that they are a warm, interesting, unique family and fascinating, rounded characters. Yes, Arvinder is a chauvinist but there seems to be some irony to what he says — and from the way he indulges his female grandchild (Bhavika is nicknamed “Wah wah” for her attention-seeking) it is clear that the patriarchy goes only so far.

Sarbjit, his wife of 35 years, seems initially like a clichéd Indian mother, expressing her love through cooking and responding to all crises with the suggestion of eating, but she also surprises: it’s not often that you see a 55-year-old Asian woman on television playing computer games and calling her pet terrier a “little shit”.

Meanwhile, Tejind, the youngest son, who works at Heathrow and also runs a DJ business, appears at first to be the archetypal set-upon Indian boy, claiming that he has never had a girlfriend, has never kissed a girl, and is a virgin. But when, on further questioning, he remarks “I’m going to stick to that line”, you get a hint of a more complex truth: maybe, for him, admitting that he is a virgin on national television is not as horrific as admitting to his family that he may have had girlfriends.

More generally, the family’s amazing slobbishness fascinates: at one point Sarbjit wakes her son by mobile phone at 12.40 in the afternoon, and Arvinder is so lazy that he calls his son — who is a few metres away — on his mobile phone to ask him to pass the TV remote control.

Indeed, the show is a watershed, an important moment for those of us who grew up never seeing brown faces on telly. Until now, the representation of Asian families on British television has been essentially tokenistic, a recent low point being the Ferreiras on EastEnders, an extremely dull family with a Portuguese surname, whose first names were a mixture of Muslim and Hindu and who seemed to have been included only as some kind of moronic BBC box-ticking exercise. But with the Grewals we have a real family who, for once, are not portrayed entirely through the prism of their culture.

sathnam@thetimes.co.uk

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