Coming 2011: 'Friday Night Dinner'

Tom Rosenthal & Simon Bird [via Robert Popper]

I've received a press release about a new Channel 4 comedy called Friday Night Dinner, written by Robert Popper (co-creator of Look Around You). It's hardly worth me explaining more, as their blurb is already pretty comprehensive:

For the Goodman family, Friday Night Dinner is just like Sunday lunch: just ntake two days away, add on an extra course and you've pretty much got it.

This new Channel Four comedy is written and produced by Robert Popper, whose combined credits as a writer/producer/script editor include Look Around You, Peep Show, South Park, Inbetweeners, Him & Her, The IT Crowd and many more iconic series of recent times. Robert has a mum, a dad and a brother and it would be fair to say that any resemblance between them and the Goodman Family featured in the show is entirely intentional.

Adam and his brother, Jonny, view Friday night dinner as a necessary annoyance -- necessary because they get fed, and annoying because, well, they have to spend the evening with Mum and Dad. It's not that Mum and Dad aren't wonderful. They really are. But Dad slugs ketchup straight from the bottle, Mum is obsessed with Masterchef and even Grandma likes to wear her new bikini around the house.

As for the next generation, there is much consternation that Jonny's girlfriend, Alison, is nothing less than 'made-up' and not even the Internet can sort out a "female" for Adam. Maybe this is because Adam writes jingles for toilet roll adverts, and Jonny's favourite party trick is to jump out of bin-liners onto unsuspecting victims. Of course every family has its foibles, its rituals and its eccentricities. It’s just that the Goodmans have made something of an art form of theirs...

Wonderfully played by an ensemble cast including Tamsin Greig (Green Wing, Black Books), Simon Bird (Inbetweeners), Paul Ritter (Pulling) and comedy newcomer Tom Rosenthal, plus special guest star, Mark Heap (Green Wing, Spaced), Friday Night Dinner is a truly original series about growing up but not growing away. In the best traditions of Channel Four comedy, it successfully marries the ground-breaking with the familiar and best of all, it's really, really funny.

Friday Night Dinner is directed by Steve Bendelack, whose comedy CV includes The League of Gentlemen, The Royle Family and Little Britain.

Sounds great to me, just going on the talent involved, but we'll see how it turns out. Friday Night Dinner is scheduled to begin a six-part run next February.