Friday Night Dinner

Grandma's hair is stuck in the car door and dad still isn't wearing a top (he's baking) as Robert Popper's sublime fam-com continues. Tonight's spiral of doom is triggered by the curtains and only exacerbated by a casserole mishap. Meanwhile, the boys continue to spike each other's water glasses: "Don't waste gin. It's your mother's for when she's depressed." The scene with the neighbour's dog and an oblivious grandma is an excruciating comedy classic - but it's not the set-pieces this show relies on, it's the beautifully crafted script.

Apart from the smatterings of mildly bad language, this Jewish take on My Family remains a surprisingly cosy sitcom for a Friday night on Channel 4.

You can't fault the cast - which includes Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal as bickering brothers who revert to toddlerhood every time they step through the front door into the family home.

The dramas are small ones and this week a family squabble manages to break out over the colour of mum Jackie's new curtains. The bright spots in all this are Paul Ritter as the bare-chested shirt-phobic dad and Mark Heap as the oddball neighbour Jim.

Those three little words: "And Mark Heap" at the start of any sitcom are like a British Standards kitemark guaranteeing that there'll be nuggets of bizarre brilliance tucked away inside - and tonight's scene involving Jim's trip to the pub with his lager-loving dog is very odd indeed.

Another Friday night, and another borderline gruesome family dinner with the Goodmans. The hapless, girl-shy Adam (Simon Bird) faces yet another painful interrogation about "females", or girlfriends, from Dad (the magnificently weird Paul Ritter): "Don't call them females" Adam whines, "they're not corpses." Tonight batty granny visits and upsets Mum (Tamsin Greig), who's already feeling generally unappreciated, by dissing her new curtains. But the most sublimely stupid bit of the episode involves barmy neighbour Jim (Mark Heap) and his dog. This superb beast does the best drunk-acting I have ever seen on television when Jim takes him to the local pub, a ghastly hole called the Black Boy. Dogs shouldn't drink beer. Really, they shouldn't.

Dinner at the Goodmans always results in a neatly played farce. Tonight, things kick off with grandma's hair stuck in the car door (how?) before moving on to an argument about curtains. Can Adam smooth things over?

A family comedy like no other, Friday Night Dinner is well on its way to becoming the kind of small-scale Channel 4 hit that keeps the cognoscenti coming back year after year. The chemistry between Tamsin Greig, Simon Bird, Paul Ritter and Tom Rosenthal is terrific. Tonight's antics revolve around gin, bin bags and Mrs Goodman's efforts to improve the living room décor; it's astonishing how much comedy can be mined from a pair of pee-coloured curtains.

In Friday Night Dinner, Channel 4's new family sitcom, Tamsin - who is a very glam 44 - plays Jackie Goodman, mother of two thoroughly annoying twentysomething sons and wife to a useless husband. It's about as entertaining as having an enema. Mind you, after a mind-numbing hour watching Benidorm on ITV, anything seems like light relief.

Friday Night Dinner growing on Twitter users

Friday Night Dinner recovered from its shaky start with a second episode that Twitter users loved.

The boys arrive home to find Dad still naked from the belt upwards. But that's the least of their worries when they spy him behaving very oddly through the window. Paul Ritter, as dad Goodman, continues to be a comic revelation. How is this his first leading role in a sitcom? Writer Robert Popper's now-established comic rhythm is pacy and fresh in a way you wouldn't expect of a family sitcom. And this episode concludes with a last line that wraps it up so perfectly, you'll want to wind back and watch it again.

Friday Night Dinner Episode 2 Review: Getting Better?

Many of us at OTB (and you out there on the interweb) were underwhelmed by last week's debut of Friday Night Dinner, but will the second episode be where Robert Popper's new comedy starts to shine? Well... not quite.

Friday Night Dinner is turning into a tiny treasure. It's not an eventful sitcom but my, it's a funny one, with streams of uncomplicated laughs. There's a scene in a car with a VERY LOUD stereo that left me helpless; I watched it three times before I had to be dragged away and sedated. Writer Robert Popper has nailed the in-jokes, the petty embarrassments and routine bits of silliness that make family life fun, and not in a broad, pantomime-hapless My Family kind of way. Friday Night Dinner is full of surprises and the cast work together seamlessly; Tamsin Greig as a good-hearted, slightly ditzy mum, Paul Ritter as a well-meaning, barmy dad and Simon Bird (yes, Will from The Inbetweeners) and Tom Rosenthal as their grown-up but daft sons. It's endearing, too; everyone loves each other, which is why they are so comfortable with embarrassments. Well, most embarrassments. Adam (Bird) isn't too keen on being quizzed in the downstairs loo by his dad about "females" (ie girlfriends). "Do you have to call them females? You're not a policeman."