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Friday Night Dinner (2011-2020) is a Channel 4 comedy television series. Once a week, the Goodman family meet up for a Sabbath meal on Friday night.

The family consists of snappy mother Jackie (Tamsin Greig), half-deaf hoarding father Martin (Paul Ritter), and twenty-something sons Adam and Jonny (Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal). Hilarity Ensues as the whole night is filled with the brothers' constant war of attrition, Martin's Oddball nature freaking everyone out, Jackie's constant barking to get everything (and everyone) ready to eat, as well as the regular intrusions of the neighbour Jim Bell (Mark Heap), Jackie's best friend "Auntie" Val (Tracy-Ann Oberman), Jackie's mother Nellie (Frances Cuka), and Martin's mother "Horrible Grandma" (Rosalind Knight).

All this combined into surprisingly elaborate Fawlty Towers Plots, which always collapse at the climax of the episode.

The programme ran for six series of six episodes each.^*except series 2, which has a "Christmas" special that aired around the eponymous holiday. The series can be streamed on Netflix in most regions, and can also be streamed for free on All4 (UK only).

On 28th May, 2021, a "Making of" Documentary for the show was released to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the show, with a foreword about Paul Ritter's death.

Not to be confused with Grandma's House, a similar show that aired around the same time, also part of the "dysfunctional Jewish family meets for a meal" genre of TV.`

The writers would then move on to make another comedy, I Hate You.

This show provides examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Jim towards Jackie, at least in the first few seasons.
  • Mr Morris towards Nelly. She likes him at first, but then it turns out the entire family hates him, and she ends up faking a heart attack to get out of marrying him.
• Abusive Parents: Downplayed with Martin, who verbally abuses Adam and Jonny quite a lot, though the boys give as good as they get. Played very straight with Horrible Grandma, Martin's mother, to the point that she is Hated by All.
• Accidental Marriage: Jonny in "Celebrations" gets married to an American girl while away in Vegas, and that episode deals with his family coming to terms with it, and Jackie being angry at not being informed of said marriage.
• The Alleged Car:
  • Jonny, a real estate agent, gains access to a company car...shaped like a miniature house.
  • Adam's car, which has numerous faults and then ends up in flames in the episode "The Surprise".
• All for Nothing: Played for Laughs. After Val spent part of "The Funeral" dealing with Cynthia’s antics while being forced to do her hair, the latter is happy with the result...before putting on a hat that manages to cover up most of her hair. Naturally, Val reacts accordingly to what just happened.
• All Jews Are Cheapskates: Zigzagged with Martin. He eats out of the bin, spoons unused ketchup back into the bottle and saves back copies of New Scientist on the grounds that they'll be worth something someday as "collectibles". On the other hand, he's prone to lavish spending when it comes to his obsessions, bribing all and sundry to keep his dead fox, blowing money on a run-down caravan, and spending £300 on a crane to get a plastic bag out of a tree. Averted with the rest of the family, though, who have their faults, but are not notably mean with money.
  • His mother is no different. After his 6th birthday, she stopped giving him presents as he realised that she was just wrapping up all of last year's presents again.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: The boys wince a lot at their parents, especially (understandably) at their father, but keep coming back for the free dinners and out of ingrained loyalty.
• Angrish: Adam in "The Plastic Bag" refuses to say "I love you" to Jackie, his mother (for context, Jackie is angry at Adam for not mentioning her in a local interview when he mentions other members of his family offhandedly). The refusal to say "I love you" gives Jackie a reason to go full-blown Jewish Mother on her son - aided by Auntie Val, on principle.
• Animal Lover: Jim likes Wilson and other animals.... but none of the animals he's come in contact with like him.
• Animals Hate Him: Wilson seems to dislike Jim, his owner, completely ignoring his commands. Similarly, a cat Jim cat-sits in series 5 has him take the cat on a walk, while very visibly struggling to make it walk (a problem he also has with Wilson and Milson). Milson seems to be ignorant of Jim's commands.
• Annoying Laugh: The other Jackie in "The Other Jackie" laughs every time she finishes a sentence, or if there's a break in the conversation.
• Artistic License – Medicine: An electric shock like the one Jim suffers in "The Mouse" would cause at least minor burns, and probably require more treatment than a single round of mouth-to-mouth.
• Author Catchphrase: Simon Bird brings the same deadpan "Brilliant" used by several characters in The Inbetweeners to this show, where both Adam and Jonny use it.
• Babies Ever After: Adam and Jonny with the two Lucys in the series 6 finale.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In "The New Car", Adam buys something for Martin, and Martin tells him to hide it. The audience only sees a nondescript package that's wrapped in a plastic bag, and are lead to believe it's something illegal. A few moments later, it's revealed that Martin is on a low-calorie diet, and the package in question is cheese (with Jonny bringing cakes later). Martin's behaviour mirrors exactly that of a drug addict. This is lampshaded by Jonny a minute later.
  • In "The Cage", Auntie Val is making dinner and greets the boys at the door with the exact vocal cadence of Jackie, with the camera being behind her shoulder for a few seconds. Her hairstyle is also noticeably more like Jackie's too.
• Birthday Episode:
  • In "The Mercedes", it's Adam’s birthday and he is disappointed by his presents: a microwave oven, an electric knife sharpener, a miniature vacuum cleaner and a book about the SS. Martin cooks his birthday meal, overcooked meat and dense potatoes. Then Jonny tricks Jim into buying Adam a made up Jewish gift called a ’’Schmoigel’’, a fruit basket with only green fruit. But no pears.
  • "The New Car" a drunken Jim comes over to the Goodmans house as he is celebrating his dog Wilson's birthday, who is 4 or 9. Jim has made a birthday cake and shares it with the Goodmans, but half of the cake is dog food.
  • In "Congratulations", it's Jim’s birthday. He sees the Congratulations banner and thinks that they “remembered” his birthday, but really it was to celebrate Adam winning a music award.
  • "The Surprise" is Jackie’s birthday. She is having a surprise birthday party that she secretly organised herself. She entrusts Martin with the job of emailing the invitation to 44 of her friends. Big mistake, as he accidentally tells them the wrong date and only manages to get 6 people – two of whom are Sarah (who did the curtains 5 years ago) and Horrible Grandma.
  • "Dad's Birthday" is all about Martin being grumpy because an online medical survey told him the exact day he would die.
• Blatant Lies:
  • In "The Anniversary" Jonny gets a tattoo of a skull and some text that reads "Vive Celer Aoulescens Florece", which apparently means "family comes first" in Latin. Adam quickly translates the phrase online and tells everyone it actually means "live fast, die young".
  • In "Christmas", everyone hates Jackie's turkey because it's dry, and Adam, Jonny and Martin spend a good portion of the episode mouthwatering over the turkey "Horrible Grandma" brought over.
• Brain Bleach: Used as the last joke of "The Other Jackie" after seeing Jim naked in their hot tub.
• Brick Joke:
  • In "Congratulations", when asked by Jackie what he knows about his new wife, Jonny struggles to come up with an answer and says "she likes apples". Near the end of the episode, Jonny, out of mild curiosity, asks Lisa:
    Jonny: By the way, do you like apples?
    Lisa: Apples make me heave.
    Jonny: Oh...cool.
  • In "The Other Jackie" one is built around the Goodman parents' chosen term for sex: nippy nippy.
  • In "The Plastic Bag", Martin mentions getting pie all over him when he falls over into some bins, and later on the thing that breaks Adam's car windscreen is him slipping on the pie while getting a plastic bag from a tree.
  • In "The Au Pair", Gibby off-handedly mentions she likes wolves to Jim, who recoils with some confusion and fear. The thing that makes Jim deathly afraid of Gibby is her wolf shirt, which causes Jim to run out of the house, petrified.
• British Brevity: The show only has six episodes a series. The exception is series 2, which has its final episode be a Christmas Episode, aptly title "Christmas". Its Long Runner status at least allowed it to reach 37 episodes altogether however, a decent number for a British comedy.
• Captain Obvious: Martin often speaks like this, replacing certain words, such as "girlfriends" with "females".
• Catchphrase: Jackie affectionately calls Adam "bobble", while any girlfriends Adam and Jonny may (or may not) have will be called "females" by Martin. Horrible Grandma seems to like calling people "prostitutes". As for the others:
  • Martin:
  "Hello bambinos."
  "It's boiling!"
  "Lovely bit of squirrel, Jackie."
  "Shit on it!"
  • Jim:
  "Hello, Jackie, you look nice..." or variations thereof, also "Something smells nice", when he turns up just before dinner and then peers expectantly down the hallway as if expecting to be invited in.
  "Wilson! Remain..."
  "ShalooOoOom!" whenever the family mention they're in the middle of a Jewish tradition.
  • Jonny:
  "Alright, pusface!" when greeting Adam
  • Adam:
  "Alright, pissface!" when greeting Jonny
  "Brilliant."
  • "Skill McGill" is used by both brothers.
  • Jackie:
  "MARTIN!" whenever Martin says or does something particularly annoying.
  • Mr. Morris:
  "Bloody punk rockers!"
• Character Development: At the beginning of the series Jim is genuinely creepy, but as the show progresses his Stalker with a Crush tendencies are downplayed and he becomes merely eccentric (most of the time, at least).
• Chekhov's Armoury: This show loves using this trope. If something is mentioned, be it a throwaway phrase, a joke, or someone being talked about, it will appear in the episode again, no matter how mundane it may seem when you first see or hear it.
• Christmas Episode: In the aptly titled episode "Christmas", Adam points out to Jackie how strange it is that they, a Jewish family, have a Christmas dinner every year, which leads to a small argument between the two about why Jackie insists on it. When Martin and Jonny comes through the hallway with a Christmas tree, Jackie protests that "it isn't right", which Adam chimes up and points out that her previous argument of "it's tradition" is an Immediate Self-Contradiction. A Running Gag in the episode also has "Horrible Grandma" pointing out the same thing.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Jim has a habit of throwing non-sequiturs into conversation. In one episode, he decides to pop round to their house to tell them that their doorbell is broken (he knows because there's a sign on it), and when his dog runs away, he panics "What if someone's raped him?"
  • Martin’s tendency to have small but annoying eccentricities, to the point of Flanderization in later series.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Martin in "The Mouse" repeatedly says the word "bugger" and its variants a good 15 times in the course of about one minute as the builders they'd hired had "buggered up the house" in various ways. He also uses the less-nice literal definition of the word during the timeframe.
• Comically Missing the Point: In "The Plastic Bag", Martin hurts his back after falling over when trying to climb on bins to get a plastic bag down from a tree. As punishment for this stupidity, Jackie not only won't let him back inside, but he won't get any crumble, the latter of which he's really not happy about.
• Comically Small Bribe:
  • In "The Jingle" Martin (and eventually the rest of the family) wants Adam to look at girls on dating sites with Martin. Adam refuses profusely, until Martin offers him £20. He then immediately agrees to go on the dating sites with him.
  • In "Wilson", Jonny and Adam are goaded into building a shelf in the garage, with Jackie bribing them with the promise of crumble that they later learn Martin made.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Jonny's awful skull tattoo can be seen when he is forced to take his shirt off in Series 4.
  • Martin and Jackie's name for sex; "nippy nippy" gets mentioned in Series 6.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Martin and Jim are both incapable of producing anything edible. Jackie is generally agreed to be a very good cook, but in some episodes is outraged that dinner guests (including Horrible Grandma and Gibby) find her to be this trope.
• Cringe Comedy: A lot of it, particularly any scene involving Jim.
• Deadpan Snarker: Adam and Jonny, usually towards their parents. Other characters do this sometimes, even Martin.
• Diet Episode: Jackie has put Martin on a diet "no chips, no chocolate, no cheese, no cakes" for two weeks. This annoys him as he feels like he is eating pieces of forest, and he compares his situation to living in Nazi Germany. He has his two sons smuggle in food for him, which he keeps hidden in the downstairs toilet, but Jackie finds out at the end of the episode.
• Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: A piano tuner comes round to the Goodmans to service the family's piano. He is of course blind; and this provokes massive social awkwardness among the Goodman family, Jackie in particular, who are completely unsure as to how to deal with this or even refer to it. The piano tuner turns out to be sarcastic and scathing to them, and sadistically plays on their diffidence about his disability, possibly For the Evulz.
• Dissimile: Being on a low-calorie diet is equivalent to Nazi Germany, according to Martin.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Jim's new dog in Series 6 is called Milson, a one-letter difference from his previous dog Wilson. Jim claims they are two totally separate names because the genders associated with both names are the opposite.
• Dom Com: There are occasional scenes in other locations, but most of the action happens in and around the Goodman family home.
• Doomed New Clothes: The new dress Val shows to Jackie is burned in a bonfire by complete accident by Martin.
• The Door Slams You: Jackie's mother, while trying on her bikini, finds the front door open. She walks over to check why... and is promptly thrown through it when Martin unknowingly knocks the door shut.
• Drop-In Character: Jim. He knocks on the door of the family Once an Episode for increasingly specific and bizarre reasons.
• Dysfunctional Family: The Goodmans are constantly winding each other up, whether intentionally or otherwise.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Adam is always referred to as "Pusface" by Jonny, which is revealed in "The Violin" to have been coined because of Adam's spots during his teenage years.
• Embarrassing Ringtone: In "The New Car", Jonny changes Adam's ringtone to a clip of him singing "My balls never dropped" on repeat. Adam gets him back later in the episode by changing Jonny's ringtone to him singing "I've got a scabby penis". Then Jonny gets him back AGAIN by changing his ringtone to “Toilet sex, toilet sex! I like toilet se-ex!”
• Embarrassing Tattoo: In "The Anniversary", Jonny gets a horrible tattoo (of a skull with red hair saying "viva celer adolescens morere" (translated to "live fast and die young")) after he lost his job to a staff restructure.
• Epic Fail: Martin is so bad at painting that his attempt to paint Jackie for her birthday present has everyone who's seen it hate it.
• Escalating War: Between Jonny and Adam. Much of the time, it's adding salt to each other's drinks (sometimes, other things such as gin) in increasingly elaborate ways. Generally leads to people getting caught up in the crossfire.
  Grieving guest: My dad's just died, and you’re just putting salt in everything?!
• Everyone Has Standards: Jim may be a weird, obnoxious, rude man with No Social Skills, but he feels genuinely bad and apologises when he unknowingly invites a Nazi into their home.
• Expy: Two examples with characters played by the same actors. Jim is precisely the same twitchy, asocial pervert that Mark Heap played in Green Wing, Dr Alan Statham, though minus the ego that came with being a consulting radiologist, and the excuse that he may have some sort of disorder. Adam, meanwhile, is Will from The Inbetweeners five years later.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Martin being shirtless, which is (unfortunately) most of the time. Justified in "The Anniversary", as Martin and Jackie were in the middle of romancing each other.
  • Mr. Morris wrestles with his shirt off.
  • Jackie's mother was at one point seen in a bikini.
• Fanservice: An in-universe example. Adam looks away from his mother in lingerie in "The Anniversary".
• Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife: Martin constantly makes foolish decisions like hoarding old magazines and trying to preserve a dead fox, whereas Jackie is the level-headed Straight Man.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Featuring, among other things, Martin reading out the coroner's report in place of the eulogy, and Wilson trying to eat the deceased's corpse.
• Funny Foreigner: Gibby, the Goodmans' Swiss au pair.
• Gilligan Cut: In "The Tin of Meat", Martin eventually eats his 20 year old "lucky meat", and this comes up:
  Martin: Actually, it's very nice. It's delicious.
  [cut to Martin being wheeled out by an ambulance, having gotten ill from food poisoning after eating the rotten meat]
• Girlfriend in Canada: In series 1, Jonny's supposed girlfriend does exist...but she's going out with someone else.
• Hated by All: Cynthia "Horrible Grandma" Goodman is always horrible to anyone and everyone she meets, including her family, to the point that she's openly hostile to everything short of Jim's singing in "Christmas". When she dies in the middle of a magic trick in "Dad's Birthday", Martin's mournful crying turns into relieved cries of laughter.
• Hate Sink: Cynthia is called "Horrible Grandma", and is loathed by everyone, insulting their looks, and she keeps pointing out flaws that don't exist, such as making tea "badly" because it was too hot. Even as early as Series 2's "Christmas" Jonny says he's waiting for her death, which Jackie also jokes about. They don't seem hugely bothered when it actually happens.
• Helicopter Parents: These two can rarely resist poking their noses into their adult sons’ affairs.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Jim apparently knows Chinese, which he learned while in...Japan. He is also quite a good singer, singing some Christmas carols in Series 2's "Christmas" episode. He's such a nice singer everyone in the room is in tears by the end of it (even "Horrible Grandma!").
• Idiot Ball:
  • Martin holds the ball the most; in one case he somehow made apple crumble, but forgot to put the apples in.
  • Adam and Jonny often pass the ball between them during their prank wars. Neither of them ever seems to learn to cover their drinks.
• Idiot Houdini: Jim's eccentric tendencies allow him a fair amount of leeway with the Goodman family. Although they don't consider him a friend, they are generally too nice to outright throw him out or shoo him away.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Jim pretty much always acts like this, while Martin sometimes comes off the same way.
  • Grandma Nellie frequently does this to Jackie, such as asking if she did her own hair "over the bath" when she actually had it done by a hairdresser.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  Mr Morris: Well, aren't you going to pay the man?
  Adam: Why do we have to pay?
  Mr Morris: Because if your grandmother had never existed, your house wouldn't have destroyed my headlamp.
  Adam: And that's actual logic?
• In-Series Nickname: Jonny and Adam call each other "Pissface" and "Pusface" respectively. Their dad's ex-girlfriend, Sheila Bloom, is known universally as "Bitchface", and Martin's Mother, Cynthia, is named "Horrible Grandma" by everyone. Adam, for reasons unknown, is affectionately called "Bobble" by Jackie.
• Insistent Terminology: Martin keeps nagging Adam about the lack of "females" in Adam's life.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: In "Christmas" Jonny has a hangover, and when he claims he feels better to the family, he lets out a sickly noise, at which Adam immediately names the trope.
• It's All About Me: Sheila Bloom, better known as "Bitchface", has some serious vanity problems, and only talks about herself and her lifestyle in conversations with other people.
• Jerkass:
  • Mr. Morris, Grandma's terrifying 84-year-old boyfriend.
  • Mr. Greencock, the piano tuner. Unfortunately a Karma Houdini too.
  • Cynthia, aka Horrible Grandma.
• Jewish Mother: Jackie fits the stereotype. As do grandmothers Cynthia and Nellie when relating to their adult children Martin and Jackie. Auntie Val also has her moments.
• Line-of-Sight Alias: This occurs in two scenes in the episode "The Fox".
  • The first is Jackie questioning why Martin is lending money to Jim, and Martin replies with "for mirrors", which she then lampshades.
  • Then later in the episode Martin question Val what "surprise" she is getting for Jackie, and Val says "Bicycle" and "this house" as to where she'd get such an item so late at night.
  • Jonny gets asked by Adam and Jackie about a fact about his newly-wedded wife to prove he knows something about her. He looks briefly at the nearby fruit bowl and says that she likes apples. Becomes a Brick Joke later on, as when he asks about it out of curiosity, she says they make her heave.
• Literally Loving Thy Neighbor: In series one and two, Jim has a poorly disguised crush on Jackie, and turns up constantly at their door, always giving a weak excuse to see her. This aspect of his personality is toned down in later series, but his excuses get increasingly more bizarre as the show goes on.
• Love at First Sight: Jim and Gibby. Jim is infatuated with Gibby, to the point of barging into the Goodmans' residence just to see her, something he notably never did with Jackie. When Gibby frisks Jim's legs, Jackie is horrified to learn that they are in love.
• Mad at a Dream: In "The Loft", Jackie recently developed a very nasty grudge (Val joins in) towards Martin because of an unknown reason, which she won't even tell the boys, but Martin says that it's personal, or sexual. It later turns out that Jackie was angry at Martin because he had a dream about being in a milk bath with Lady Di.
• Male Gaze: In "The Date", Martin remarks twice about Tanya Green that "She has a nice bum."
• Mood Whiplash: In "Wilson", both Jonny and Adam stop fighting as soon as they hear that Wilson isn't moving and appears to be dead. The entire episode after that point is taken dead seriously.
• Negative Continuity: The Goodmans' house frequently suffers damage that would cost a large amount of time and money to fix (like a light fixture being ripped from the wall, or a sofa falling through the stair banister), but it is always back to normal by the next episode. "The Caravan" is probably the worst offender, since not only is a septic tank spilled all over the dining room floor, the titular caravan crashes into the house and then catches on fire. Nevertheless, the Goodman house is good as new by the next episode.
• Never My Fault: Martin never admits his own faults, saying that it was the shop who made a mistake even though he added 2 noughts on every order. He also tells his family not to blame him, but his brain when he invites the wrong guest over and won't admit that he made mistakes with Jackie's party invites, saying it was too much to remember.
• Noodle Incident: Jim's life seems to be made up of these.
  • How Jim's dog ate his keys.
  We were playing a little game. (Beat) It went wrong.
  • In "The Fox," it's revealed that Jim was born in a zoo, which is never elaborated upon.
• No OSHA Compliance: Martin’s caravan, as it's a fire hazard, as well as not being stabilized properly.
• No Social Skills:
  • Jim, to quite a worrying extent.
  • Martin, in a way that’s rather flanderized in the later series to make him more dumb.
• Ominously Open Door: The very first scene parodies this. The two boys arrive at their parents to find the door hanging open. Nervously, they approach it...and find their next door neighbour stepping out of the downstairs loo.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in three episodes:
  • "The Two Tonys": When in university, Martin used to have two flatmates, both named Tony, one of whom was a very nice guy, and the other, apparently not so much. Now, Martin wants to reconnect with the "nice Tony"...unfortunately, he had their surnames mixed up, and invites the wrong Tony over for dinner.
  • In "The Other Jackie" there are two Jackies; Jim has a date with a Jackie, who, after a series of events, meets the other Jackie (Jonny and Adam's mum).
  • In "The Caravan", Jonny and Adam are both dating separate girls called Lucy. (Adam and Jonny are not particularly pleased with this coincidence). When they come to dinner in the Series Finale, Jim comes to believe they are two halves of the same person.
  • Enforced by Jim when he gets a new dog to replace Wilson; Jim calls her Milson instead. In one episode he pet-sits a cat, which he names Watson.
• Only Sane Man: Adam or Jackie usually takes this role. Jonny also has his moments.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Mr Morris had "the biggest button-sewing business in the Hertfordshire area...until Rutherford's came along".
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Adam and Jonny are disgusted by the revelation that their parents still have sex (or "nippy nippy", if you like.)
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: "Schmoigel," allegedly a traditional Jewish birthday present comprising a basket of various green-coloured fruits. It's clear that Johnny has come up with the word on the spot to sound as Yiddish as possible.
• Plumber's Crack: Adam is a subversion. He never wears a belt so whenever he bends over, the waistband of his boxers peeks out. Jonny sometimes gives him wedgies because of it.
• The Precious, Precious Car: Bitchface's Mercedes. She always talks about it as if it were a child of hers, and gets really peeved when Martin reverses into it by mistake.
• Priceless Ming Vase: As part of the show's Chekhov's Armoury, any object that is established to be of significance to someone will likely either end up damaged or destroyed by the end of the episode. See: the dress, the Mercedes, "Buggy" the toy rabbit, the apple crumble, the caravan...
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Jonny and Adam.
• Replacement Goldfish: After Wilson's death, Jim gets a new dog and gives her a new name: Milson.
• Running Gag: Much of the show's humour comes from the quantity of running gags and Chekhovs Guns any given episode has going on at any given time, a fair few showing up Once an Episode, in increasingly roundabout ways:
  • Martin is shirtless, pantsless, or otherwise semi-naked, invariably because he's "boiling".
  • Adam and Jonny try to sit on each other on one of the sofas.
  • In-universe, Martin always jokingly compliments Jackie's cooking by calling it "a lovely bit of squirrel" (which no one else seems to find all that funny).
  • Either Adam or Jonny (usually the latter) putting salt into the other's glass of water (in one case, a water bottle, which Adam was not pleased about).
  • Martin referring to women as "females" (particularly towards Adam whenever he's trying to give him The Talk or advising him about dating, feeling he doesn't have to do the same to Jonny because Jonny talks about his girlfriend a lot).
  • "Crimble crumble!" (Jim and the Goodmans' family name for crumble.).
  • Jim can't tell Adam and Jonny apart, though this trait is dropped after the third series.
  • Jackie's mother insulting her daughter's hair.
  • Jonny going in the cupboards to fill his mouth with whipped cream, straight from the can, and almost always being called out on it.
  • The episode "Congratulations" has Martin count the amount of money wasted on using expensive wine "per gulp", to the point of having a calculator and giving updates on the price a few minutes later.
  • In "Wilson", Jonny keeps using various people's phones to prank call Adam, who is patiently waiting for a call from an American client who may want to use one of his songs.
  • In "The Dress", Val looks and dresses exactly like Jackie, but neither ever notice. It's constantly lampshaded by everyone else, to the point Martin was the person to notice it.
  • In "The Funeral", Jonny wants to watch the Monaco Grand Prix after the funeral, and everyone replies with "Who's playing?", much to his increasing irritation.
  • In "The Other Jackie", "nippy nippy" gets mentioned, and is used by the boys as a name for Wilson as proof it isn't Jim's in front of "other Jackie".
  • In "The Plastic Bag" Jim, Martin and Val all get distracted by a plastic bag in a tree near their house, while Martin attempts to remove it. Jim postulates doing so, but doesn't.
  • In "The Au Pair", Gibby (pronounced Jibby) keeps asking for cream tea, something she used to have when she was the boy's au pair twenty years ago.
  • In "The Cage", the "woman's procedure" Jackie has had has Adam, Valerie and Jonny guess if it was a "higher or lower" job. Even Jim, of all people, says the phrase when he learns of it.
    • The episode also had blue masking tape being used to tape various thing around the house.
  • In "The Females", Martin has managed to get glass shards in both the soup and chicken. The former is explained as Martin broke the ventilator light on top of the oven, while the latter is never explained at all, with the driving conflict of the episode being that nobody should tell Jackie, and thus everybody should keep causing distractions to keep her from eating her food.
• Series Fauxnale: Series 6's final episode; "The Females", was written to act as one, in case the show never got renewed by Channel 4. The writer and producer; Robert Popper, went on record that the show might come back, but the sudden death of Paul Ritter in April 2021 probably means it's finished for good.
• Significant Name Overlap: Adam and Jonny both acquire girlfriends at the same time, much to their mother's delight. Unfortunately, both girls are named Lucy.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: A very passive-aggressive variation between Jackie and "Bitchface".
• Sleeping with the Boss: Jonny in "The Yoghurts", and much of the episode is trying to get the courage to break up with her, primarily because she's quite a bit older than him.
• Spoiler Title: Played With: The title of an episode generally correlates to the primary Running Gag of said episode, such as in "The Mercedes", where there it was that Sheila "Bitchface" Bloom adores her Mercedes.
• Status Quo Is God: None of the romantic interests on the series seem to last beyond an episode or two.
• Strictly Formula: Any given episode structure usually has the same story beats and running gags:
  • The Beginning: Jonny and Adam always arrive at the house (usually at the same time), Martin almost always has his shirt off (usually because he's "boiling") and greets the two with "Hello Bambinos". They open the door and Jackie is frequently mid-way though cooking dinner or yelling at someone, and Jonny puts squirty cream in his mouth (and gets told off). The main conflict is then explained (house being redone, Martin getting a new caravan, a piano tuner is coming to visit).
  • The Middle: Adam and Jonny pull a prank on each other (salt in their water, attempts to hurt one another, messing with each other' phones), the conflict and theme of the episode start to play out, and Jim always knocks on the door at an inopportune time for increasingly odd reasons and gets into a Seinfeldian Conversation. Jim then leaves, often perplexing everyone else.
  • The End: The episode will always end when the night falls apart due to either a Chekhov's Gun finally being fired, or the main conflict reaches it's climax in a magnificent way.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In "The Au Pair", Jackie and Gibby expect Adam and Jonny to remember Gibby from when she was their au pair. They don't recognise her or remember her at all. Given that Adam was four and Jonny was an infant when they last saw her around twenty years ago, it's understandable.
• Suspect Is Hatless: When the Goodmans are burgled, Jim describes the thief thus: "He was a man, very manly, probably had a winky."
• Tacky Tuxedo: Jim wears one in "The Mouse" after being invited to dinner.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Martin is a bit younger than most examples of this trope, but he still qualifies. He can't get the computer mouse to work, until it is pointed out to him that it is actually a stapler. In that same episode, he gives up using email to buy a fax machine. He believes they are "the future" as he doesn’t have to read everything off the bloody screen. Similarly, he also tried online shopping for the first time and ends up buying items in huge quantities (100 tomatoes, 100 bottles of bleach, 100 bottles of ketchup and 100 kitchen rolls).
  Martin: I tell you, that Internet - I give it three years.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Auntie Val vastly overstays her welcome when she stays with the Goodmans after her divorce. There's also several episodes where the plot revolves around trying to get an unwanted guest to go away.
• This Is Gonna Suck: In "The Caravan", Adam and Jonny agree not to tell their parents about having girlfriends at the same time because it will make their mother insufferably happy. It takes Jackie drinking gin (something she does when depressed) and being lonely at dinnertime for Jonny to reveal all.
• Title Drop: Happens on the odd occasion (it is a common descriptor, after all):
  Jim: Friday Night Dinner with you! And...the others.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Horrible Grandma was always horrible, but became even more openly vile in series six during her final appearance in "Dad's Birthday," which ended with her surprising death.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Martin has a fondness for ketchup, while Jonny eats whipped cream straight from the can. It is mentioned in multiple episodes that Jackie loves lamb.
  • Gibby, the Goodmans' former au pair, is obsessed with British cream teas and ate one every single day for a year when she was living with the Goodmans.
• Transatlantic Equivalent:
  • An American pilot was shot in 2011, featuring Tony Shalhoub and Allison Janney, but it wasn't picked up.
  • Amazon Freevee streamed an adaptation called Dinner with the Parents in 2024, which was cancelled after one season of ten episodes.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • Jim calls Wilson's dog excrement "dollops" in "Wilson".
  • Valerie, Adam, Jonny and Martin call Jackie's delicate surgery a "woman's procedure".
  • Jackie and Martin call sex "nippy-nippy". (Possibly to avoid grossing out their sons, but it's so obvious what they're talking about that it doesn't work at all).
  • Gibby spends hours in the Goodmans' toilet, which she refers to as the "facilities."
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Adam and Jonny fight A LOT but it's pretty clear it's not out of malice so much as sibling rivalry they never grew out of.
• Vocal Evolution: Jim has a more ditzy tone of voice from series 2 onwards, generally being higher-pitched. In series one, he actually speaks quite normally to everyone except Wilson.
• Walkie-Talkie Gag, Over: In "The Caravan" Martin has Jackie use a walkie talkie to converse with him, much to Jackie's very clear annoyance. Jackie, in response, deliberately messes up the speaking code by not adding "Over" to the end of each sentence, which Martin gets annoyed by and which becomes a Running Gag for the episode. Later on in the episode Jim has some chicken in the Caravan and uses the walkie talkie with the correct sign-off code, which angers Martin for the exact opposite reason (Jim keeps calling him for trivial reasons while maintaining the long code of use, which eventually gets on his nerves).
• Walking Shirtless Scene:
  • Martin is a Fan Disservice variation on the trope.
  • The eighty-four-year-old Mr Morris manages to top him by wrestling bare-chested.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: Largely averted, but to troll Jim, Jonny claims that "pusface" is a traditional Jewish nickname and that the eldest son should receive a basket of green fruit (but not pears) called a "schmoygle". Jim dutifully turns up at the end of the episode singing "Happy birthday pusface" clutching his schmoygle.