Skip to main content

ALL IN THE FAMILY (FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER)

 

One of the better things to happen during lockdown has been how it has enabled people to catch up on all those series they meant to watch.

In our household, it's been comedies like 'This Country, 'Motherland' and 'Schitt's Creek'.

We've also caught up on 'The Marvelous Ms Maisel' and 'Succession,'.

But one of the shows that we have really enjoyed is Channel 4's 'Friday Night Dinner'.

While we came late to the party, Robert Popper's sitcom about the Friday night ritual of a suburban north London Jewish family rarely delivers a dud episode across it six series run.

The set up is simple.

Simon Bird's advertising jingle composer Adam Goodman and his estate agent brother, Tom Rosenthal's Johnny turn up for dinner every Friday night at their parents home.

Their dad, Paul Ritter's Martin is eccentric, often wandering around the house naked from the waist up, occasionally washing his feet in the downstairs loo and developing weird obsessions with plastic bags in trees or hanging fish to dry under the stairs.

Tamsin Greig's Jackie is fiercely proud of her son's, calling them Bobble and Johnny-Boo.

The dinners are frequently interrupted by the Goodman's innocent, eccentric neighbour Jim and his dog Wilson.

Mark Heap's Jim is obsessed by their Jewish background, proving easy meat for Adam and Johnny's bare faced lying about Jewish customs.

Jackie's best friend, Tracy Ann Oberman's overbearing "Auntie Val" also makes regular appearances.

And there are occasional appearances too from Frances Cuka's Grandma and Martin's mum, Rosalind Knight's Horrible Grandma.

Series six, which aired this year, saw Martin purchase a stinking caravan, obsess about that plastic bag in a tree and Jackie sulk about Adam failing to mention her in a magazine interview while crediting Val for fostering his earliest musical memories.

It saw Jim fall for the boys' former Swiss au pair, Sally Phillips' Gibby, the Goodmans hold a disastrous birthday party for Martin, Val take on the running of the house while Jackie recovered from an operation and the brothers bring their girlfriends, or "females" as Martin calls them, to dinner.

With every episode, Popper delivers well executed farce usually forged around Adam and Johnny engineering embarrassing situations for the other.

But it is Ritter, Greig, Bird and Rosenthal who make the show and it is to their credit that you buy in so quickly to them being a family unit.

Heap also brings plenty to show, with his eccentric behaviour.

But Jim also provides much of the show's heart, with many of its most touching moments involving his character.

Oberman, Cuka and Knight also bring plenty to the show as fringe characters, as does Harry Landis as Grandma's rotten 82 year old boyfriend Mr Morris

While NBC and CBS have had three attempts at trying to create a US version, the good news is that Popper has signalled he is open to a seventh series of the original.

2020, however, has seen the passing of Cuka and Knight, robbing the series of both Grandmas.

How Popper deals with that will be fascinating but if the six seasons so far are anything to go by, he will find a way to milk affectionate laughter out of it.

'Friday Night Dinner' is essential, laugh out loud viewing and great binge watching for the Covid age.

('Friday Night Dinner' has run on Channel 4 for six series from February 25, 2011-May 1, 2020)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HOUSE OF FUN (LOL: LAST ONE LAUGHING IRELAND)

© Amazon Prime Ever wondered what the 'Big Brother' house would have been like if it was populated just by comedians? No?  Neither had I. But Amazon Prime has tried to answer that question anyway with a new comedy show 'LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland'. © Amazon Prime Originally conceived by the Japanese comic Hitoshi Matsumoyo in 2016, the show throws 10 stand-ups together in a 'Big Brother' style living room for six hours with the strict instruction that they are not allowed to laugh, crack a smile or smirk at each other's jokes or anything else. If they do, the first time they falter they get a yellow card warning. The second time, they receive a red card and are out of the game. The comedian who outlasts the others wins. © Amazon Prime Versions have been produced in Mexico, Italy, Iran, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Russia, Nigeria, Colombia and France. And with a UK version reportedly in the works, Amazon has decided to test the waters with an Irish...

FILMS OF 2024 (THE TOP TEN)

© Studio Canal, BBC Film, Protagonist Pictures, Brock Media & Arcade Pictures It was a year when  'Oppenheimer' swept the Oscars  but  Ryan Gosling stole the show with his performance of 'I'm Just Ken' . It was also the year when Saoirse Ronan once again aced her roles in two films and Cillian Murphy delivered arguably the best movie performance of his career. 2024 saw Denis Villeneuve open the door to a 'Dune' trilogy, while successful films about a Mexican drug gang leader seeking a sex change and a gay writer encountering the ghosts of his dead parents were common place when in the past they would have been unthinkable. As Pomona ranks the top 10 films it saw this year, who made the list and where are they placed? 10. THE OUTRUN (Nora Fingscheidt) There have been many movies about alcoholism over the decades but few have been as intriguing as Nora Fingscheidt's tale of a young woman coming to terms with her addiction on the Orkney Islands. Saoirse...

FILMS OF 2024 (FORTY TO THIRTY ONE)

© A24, Motel Mojave & Access Entertainment Cinemagoers found themselves this year being transported back to the world of big hair, lycra and VHS as several thrillers affectionately paid tribute to the 1980s. Music biopics were also in abundance as audiences lapped up cinematic depictions of the careers of Bob Marley, Robbie Williams and Amy Winehouse. Icons of the music industry were also not averse to the odd rockumentary, whilst indie films pushed the boundaries of the realist and film noir genres. With Pomona continuing to rank 60 movies that we watched during 2024, what made the top of the bottom half of our movie choices this year?  40. GOOD GRIEF (Daniel Levy) Following up the huge success of a TV sitcom like ' Schitt's Creek ' cannot be easy. However Shawn Levy chose to write, direct and star in his own Netflix movie, a London set comedy drama in the mould of Woody Allen. It's less funny and more wistful with Levy playing Marc, an illustrator who is plunged i...