Friday Night Dinner offers its audience various pleasures through its portrayal of an exaggerated ordinary family dynamic, slapstick comedy, familiar characters and predictable narrative structure. The sitcom is set in the familiar domestic setting of a family home and focuses on the regular routine of the adult brothers Adam and Jonny returning each Friday for dinner with their parents. Though the family interactions and rituals will seem recognizable to many viewers, they are played for comedy through exaggeration. For example, in the episode studied, a petty childhood rivalry between Adam and Jonny over a toy escalates to physical fighting and elaborate pranks. This portrayal of familiar

1. B322 exam - Section B = TV Comedy
Friday Night Dinner
‘Buggy’

2. Our TV comedy case studies
• We have to study two TV comedy case
studies which you must know about in detail
• Comedy 1: Friday Night Dinner
• Comedy 2: Bad Education

3. TV comedy sitcom genre
• Slightly unconventional in terms of the semi-
improvised (scripted but mainly on the spot,
improvised humour)
• The feel of the programme – for example the fast
paced cuts and shaky cam in moments of chaos – make
it seem more like a documentary “fly on the wall” style
of programme.
• 23-30-minute format within a 6 episode series
• Set in a familiar and domestic setting and on a
repeated set of stock characters.
• Familiar family values being exaggerated and the battle
between the parents and their children
• Some stereotypes surrounding British culture are
represented to the audience

4. Friday Night Dinner
• British TV comedy sitcom
• Written by Robert Popper
• Produced by Popper Pictures / Big Talk Productions
• Stars
– Tamsin Greig
• Prev comedy = Black Books / Episodes
– Paul Ritter
• no prev comedy but in Harry Potter, Quantum of Solace
– Simon Bird
• prev comedy = Inbetweeners
– Tom Rosenthal
• Prev comedy = Plebs
– Mark Heap
• Prev comedy = Spaced / Brass Eye

5. Friday Night Dinner
• Comedy focused on the regular
dinner experience of an ordinary
British Jewish family on each Friday night
• Originally aired in Feb 2011
• 3 series – 19 episodes
• Episode we’ll be studying:
– Series 3 episode 1 – The Girlfriend (10 pm Jun 2014)
– 6th most popular TV show on Channel 4 that week

6. Friday Night Dinner
• Every Friday night, twenty-something
brothers Adam and Jonny Goodman return to their
parents’ home for dinner.
• Adam and Jonny think of the weekly event as a
necessary annoyance – necessary because they get fed,
and annoying because, well, they have to spend the
evening with Mum and Dad.
• It’s not that M&D aren’t wonderful. They really are. But
Dad slugs ketchup straight from the bottle, Mum is
obsessed with Masterchef, and even Grandma likes to
wear her new bikini around the house.

7. Friday Night Dinner
• Adam writes jingles for toilet roll
adverts and Jonny’s favourite party
trick is to jump out of bin-liners onto
unsuspecting victims.
• Every family has its foibles, its rituals, and its
eccentricities.

8. Friday Night Dinner
Based on the
description of
Friday Night
Dinner, what
audience
pleasures might
you expect?

9. Friday Night Dinner
Based on the
description of
the characters,
what audience
pleasures do
you expect?

10. Friday Night Dinner
Based on the
description of
Friday Night
Dinner, what do
you think the
target audience
is?

11. Friday Night Dinner
• Watch the episode ‘Buggy’
• While you’re watching you should make notes
on:
– Key plot events that take place in the episode
– What audience pleasures you are actually getting
from the programme
– Who you think the target audience is based on
watching the episode

12. Friday Night Dinner
Audience
pleasures?
Target
audience?
Key plot
points?

13. Key plot events that take place in the
episode
• Jonny arrives at the same time as Adam with a bag of washing for mum to do as his boiler is broken
at home
• Dad Martin has a cold and keeps sneezing on everyone and everything
• Mum is cooking the dinner as usual and wearing a piano jumper
• The main focus is the box from the loft mum has found. In it, Adam’s diary from when he was 11
reveals that he threw Jonny’s favourite toy in the bin. Jonny tries to get revenge on Adam’s
childhood toy ‘Buggy’
• There is a snowballing effect as Jonny tries to fight Adam to get Buggy; messing up his room, tying
his legs together etc
• Adam gives Buggy to Jim to look after; it is ironic, but Jim seems instantly attached to Buggy
• They then meet Jim in the local takeaway and there is comedy when he speaks fluent Chinese; he
won’t give Adam Buggy, as he wants to keep him
• They eat the Chinese takeaway; dad is fixing his lawnmower in the kitchen
• Buggy ends up in the lake and Jonny gets Adam to go in; along with Wilson the dog
• They return home; Jim apologises
• Adam has put Jonny’s red gloves in the wash, so they turn all his white washing pink
• The final fight for Buggy results in dad sneezing and mowing Buggy to pieces; a classic snowballing
effect

14. Audience pleasures
• Escapism
• Stereotyping
• Regularity (time slot)
• Intertextuality
• Superiority
• Easy to watch
• Easy to understand
• Schadenfreude
• Narrative (resolution,
character identification,
snowballing, suspense,
comedy)
• Recognition, familiarity,
anticipation
• Difference-within-
repetition
• Performance
unpredictability and
spontaneity
• Transgressive
• Associated with
performers or
personalities

15. Uses and Gratifications Theory
• What people do with media
• The same TV programme may satisfy different
needs for different individuals
• Associated with individual personalities, stages
of maturation, backgrounds and social roles
• 4 areas of audience pleasure:
– Personal relationships
– Personal identity
– Diversion
– Surveillance

16. Audience – personal relationships
• Gaining insight into circumstances of others –
social empathy
• Identifying with others and gaining a sense of
belonging
• Finding a basis for conversation and social
interaction
• Having a substitute for real-life companionship
• Helping to carry out social roles
• Enabling one to connect with family, friends
and society

17. Audience – personal identity
• Finding reinforcement for personal values
• Finding models of behaviour
• Identifying with values in others
• Gaining insight into one’s self

18. Audience – diversion
• Escaping, or being diverted, from problems
• Relaxing
• Getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment
• Filling time
• Emotional release

19. Audience – surveillance
• Finding out about relevant events and
conditions in immediate surroundings, society
and the world
• Seeking advice on practical matters or opinion
and decision choices
• Satisfying curiosity and general interest
• Learning – self education
• Gaining a sense of security through knowledge

20. What audience pleasures you are actually
getting from the programme
• Storyline based in real life; familiar setting ( home) and
characters ( family) but funny / exaggerated situations
• Slapstick – fighting / Buggy in lake / lawnmower and Buggy
being destroyed
• Smutty / sexual innuendo / witty and visual comedy
• Motifs – catchphrases ‘Pusface’ ‘Pissface’ ‘nice bit of
squirrel’ jokes e.g Adam and Jonny fighting and one-liners
• Narrative structure – audience feel that Buggy is back but
boys are still in normal role of fighting
• Varied yet stereotyped characters – the four Goodmans but
also Jim – whom we get to know
• Short episode – same format every week, so predictable

21. – Who you think the target audience is based on
watching the episode

22. Demonstrate how Friday Night Dinner offers
their audience different pleasures (15 marks).
Point
‘Friday Night Dinner’ enables the audience to see ordinary situations in a familiar
setting but with exaggerated consequences
Evidence
The regular Friday night meal brings mum dad and their grown up sons together but
the boys’s behaviour, such as in ‘Buggy’, shows them to physically fight, Jonny “booby-
trapping” Adam’s old bedroom.
Analysis
The audience enjoys the predictability of the fighting, as well as the snownballing
effect when Jonny will go to any lengths to get Buggy from Adam and Adam resorts to
giving the soft toy to Jim, the socially inept next-door neighbour, to hide him.

23. Friday Night Dinner
• Practice question:
Demonstrate how Friday Night Dinner
offers their audience different pleasures
(15 marks).
15 mins