Friday Night Dinner

Friday Night Dinner is a British television sitcom written by Robert Popper and starring Tamsin Greig, Paul Ritter, Simon Bird, Tom Rosenthal, and Mark Heap. The comedy is focused on the regular dinner experience of the middle-class British Jewish Goodman family every Friday night. The series aired from 2011 to 2020 on Channel 4. Following the conclusion of the sixth series and Paul Ritter's death in 2021, it was announced that the show would not return. The show received two BAFTA nominations in 2012. The first series was nominated for Best Situation Comedy, while Greig was nominated for Best Female Comedy Performance. In 2021, for his performance in the final series of the show, Ritter received a posthumous BAFTA nomination for Best Male Comedy Performance. Premise Friday Night Dinner depicts Shabbat dinner in the middle-class secular Jewish Goodman family, reflecting writer and producer Robert Popper's own secular Jewish upbringing. It is set in suburban North London, and filmed there, in Mill Hill. The family consists of mother Jackie (Tamsin Greig), father Martin (Paul Ritter), elder son and musician Adam (Simon Bird), and younger son and estate agent Jonny (Tom Rosenthal). The episodes follow the family as the sons arrive at the family home and proceed to their dinner, which is often interrupted by numerous things. Although some episodes are centred around Jackie’s eccentricities, she is usually the straight character who tries to run a normal household, but is disrupted by the rest of the family. Most frequently, dinner is disrupted by Adam and Jonny playing practical jokes on each other, for example by putting salt in each other's drinking glasses, or Martin's strange habits – including walking around the house topless or eating out-of-date food and his catchphrase "shit on it". They are frequently interrupted by their strange but good-hearted neighbour Jim Bell (Mark Heap), who is attracted to Jackie and visits them due to his loneliness, in most cases accompanied by his dog, Wilson, of whom he is afraid. After Wilson's death at the end of series 5, Jim adopts a new dog who he names Milson.