Friday Night Dinner
Discussion
Did anyone catch Friday Night Dinner last week? The new comedy starring Simon Bird of Inbetweeners fame?
I wasn't expecting great things, given it's odd pitch. The whole thing was a huge disappointment, I have to say. The "family" element of pre-watershed shows like My Family was juxtaposed with sub-par knob gags that came off as Inbetweeners cast-offs, and was desperately uncomfortable. The script was wooden and dead, and various jokes were strung out endless (the dad and his obsession with New Scientist: not funny to start with, yet wheeled out ad infinitum).
The embarrassing scramble for a storyline was woven around a particularly stale gag of the neighbourhood perv coming to have a s
t in the family's downstairs toilet, and the tangent the show went off on as the man came to buy the sofa was woeful, I'm not sure where the buck should stop but it seems this show is not receiving the guidance it should up top. Bird himself was on moderate form, clearly the talent of the show but lost amoungst the otherwise dreary cast, but he was lacking the flair he has previously shown. He still seems to be playing the part of the besieged geek/pseudo-intellectual, but without the witty retorts he had in The Inbetweeners.
When assessing the positives of the show, I am taken by the dark and at times nihilistic atmosphere the show creates althoguh I'm not sure if this is the intended effect. I'm drawn back to a comment Rowan Atkinson made about the youth led comedy boom of the early 1980s; namely that it was a idea for a show strung about a collection of sketches being performed by comics who had previously been focused on sketch work. It seems now that young comedy is mainly thematic and the humour is draped over the top, the witty conversational style of The Inbetweeners even conformed to this model.
Overall, I'm not impressed with this first offering. I'd like think it's something I could come to enjoy and I will certainly watch the rest but I expect more these days.
I wasn't expecting great things, given it's odd pitch. The whole thing was a huge disappointment, I have to say. The "family" element of pre-watershed shows like My Family was juxtaposed with sub-par knob gags that came off as Inbetweeners cast-offs, and was desperately uncomfortable. The script was wooden and dead, and various jokes were strung out endless (the dad and his obsession with New Scientist: not funny to start with, yet wheeled out ad infinitum).
The embarrassing scramble for a storyline was woven around a particularly stale gag of the neighbourhood perv coming to have a s
t in the family's downstairs toilet, and the tangent the show went off on as the man came to buy the sofa was woeful, I'm not sure where the buck should stop but it seems this show is not receiving the guidance it should up top. Bird himself was on moderate form, clearly the talent of the show but lost amoungst the otherwise dreary cast, but he was lacking the flair he has previously shown. He still seems to be playing the part of the besieged geek/pseudo-intellectual, but without the witty retorts he had in The Inbetweeners. When assessing the positives of the show, I am taken by the dark and at times nihilistic atmosphere the show creates althoguh I'm not sure if this is the intended effect. I'm drawn back to a comment Rowan Atkinson made about the youth led comedy boom of the early 1980s; namely that it was a idea for a show strung about a collection of sketches being performed by comics who had previously been focused on sketch work. It seems now that young comedy is mainly thematic and the humour is draped over the top, the witty conversational style of The Inbetweeners even conformed to this model.
Overall, I'm not impressed with this first offering. I'd like think it's something I could come to enjoy and I will certainly watch the rest but I expect more these days.
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