The Royle Family is a British television sitcom produced by ITV Studios for the BBC, which ran for three series from 1998 to 2000, and specials from 2006 to 2012. It centres on the lives of a scruffy television-fixated Manchester family, the Royles, comprising family patriarch Jim Royle (Ricky Tomlinson), his wife Barbara (Sue Johnston), their daughter Denise (Caroline Aherne), their son Antony (Ralf Little) and Denise's fiance (later husband) David (Craig Cash).