I couldn't sleep last night, and surfing the 'comedy' pages of 4od, I came across 'Friday Night Dinner'. I had watched it the first week and found it terrible. In the interest of fairness, however, I decided to give it a second watch. Sitcom about a Jewish couple whose two sons come around for dinner on a Friday night. Funny potential, right?
Sadly, I only got half-way through the episode, as I still could not fathom why Channel 4 had given it top billing on a Friday night. Having seen the adverts and Tamsin Greig's last project (Episodes, reviewed here, which wasn't bad plot-wise, but not that funny), I wasn't that excited about this programme. Still, I duly watched the second episode and if anything, my opinion went down even further.
I very much enjoy The Royle Family, Black Books and similar sitcoms that concentrate not on the plot but (I will use this word only for ease of speech) 'banter', jokes and characters as they are strong enough humour-wise. This appears to be what creator Popper is doing: however, the jokes fall flat and the character 'quirks' appear forced. There also appears to be a running 'salt-in-each-other's-water' gag. Which is not funny.
Greig portrays the mother well, but doesn't seem to have much of an opportunity to be funny. The father is tedious, the brother played by Simon Bird IS basically Will from The Inbetweeners and the other brother looks curiously like Simon from The Inbetweeners, I can't really remember much else. Oh, and Mark Heap is the cursory 'annoying neighbour.' Like, er, in Spaced.
Overall, I remain unimpressed. And failed this task. Oh well, I think my creative horizons will survive. Just...
