Friday Night Dinner

It is difficult to know what the makers of Friday Night Dinner were trying to achieve with their TV series. The swearing in it sometimes makes me think that they were going for an edgy comedy show. If this is the case, then it fails. There is nothing edgy about swearing in comedy anymore - The Thick of It put paid to that. So a father saying “Shit On It!” a few times in each episode is hardly ground-breaking.

Perhaps they were going for original. But again, it’s a fail. After all, a fly-on-the-wall family show with farcical elements is just The Royle Family crossed with One Foot In The Grave. Indeed, the whole thing screams BBC sitcom (despite being on C4) – a dysfunctional Jewish family meeting for dinner and japes on a Friday could very easily sit in the TV schedules 1970s and 1980s. In-between Citizen Smith and Just Good Friends.

So not edgy and not original – even to the point of being old-fashioned. There is, of course, one way in which a comedy series could redeem itself at this point. How, I hear you ask. By being funny. And guess what? Friday Night Dinner fails here as well. It might make you smile on occasion, it might even make you laugh out loud. But it is so over-familiar that it is almost immediately tedious. Anyone who has ever had to go for a tedious family meal understands the dynamic of Friday Night Dinner - but it is understandable if they don’t want to watch such tedium on Channel 4.

So what were the makers of Friday Night Dinner trying to achieve? It’s a mystery to me, unless they were simply trying to fill the schedules. Maybe that’s it, then. Friday Night Dinner is sitcom schedule filler. And as such, it is instantly forgettable, and more than a little pointless.