The programme stars Caroline Quentin and Neil Dudgeon as a recently married couple, and is set around their dysfunctional family.

The show was written by Georgia Pritchett, and filmed at Pacific Quay Studios in Glasgow, Scotland[3] and on location (for example at Joppa, North-East of Edinburgh).

The theme music is a cover version of The Lightning Seeds' song "The Life of Riley".

[7] The Northern Echo observed that "there was something missing for a comedy – jokes";[8] The Daily Mirror comments that there are "some witty moments but these are drowned out by more regular unfunny happenings, so unimaginative and staid it's embarrassing".

[9] The Independent headlined its review of the opening episode by calling it "a marital comedy divorced from wit".

[13] The Guardian described the show as a "tired effort"[14] The Scotsman reviewed it by noting that it "feels like a parody, this time of the kind of bland, mechanical, family sitcom they supposedly don't make anymore".

The Metro said that the programme was "like a cereal advert that has been spun out into a full-length TV comedy", and that its inoffensive nature felt like being "smothered by cushions"[1] Life of Riley's first series comprises six episodes, each of which are thirty minutes long.