About Friday Night Dinner
Every Friday, adult brothers Adam and Jonny Goodman trek back to their childhood home in suburban north London for dinner with their parents, Martin and Jackie. What should be a cosy family ritual instead becomes a weekly battleground of escalating pranks, petty grudges and gloriously stupid arguments. Created by Robert Popper, the show turns the ordinary domestic sitcom into something sharper, stranger and far funnier than its modest premise suggests.
Half the comedy springs from the family itself, with the brothers needling each other like overgrown schoolboys while their endlessly eccentric father wanders the house shirtless, hoards rubbish in the shed and mutters his catchphrase to nobody in particular. The other half arrives unannounced through the back door in the shape of Jim, the lonely, socially disastrous neighbour and his terrified dog Wilson. Each episode is a small, self-contained farce in which the simplest meal spirals into chaos.
Warm beneath all its mischief, Friday Night Dinner became a treasured fixture of British comedy across its six series, beloved for its quotable lines and its painfully recognisable family dynamics. It is carried by a perfect ensemble: Simon Bird as the deadpan Adam, Tom Rosenthal as the gleefully childish Jonny, and the late Paul Ritter, whose unforgettable turn as their oddball father Martin remains one of the most cherished comic performances of its era.