Friday feeling
As Channel 4 dishes up another Friday Night Dinner, Gemma Dunn talks violins and sibling rivalry with the show’s on-screen brothers Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal
FRIDAY Night Dinner is back – and with a hot tub, ventriloquist dummy and a surprise party on the menu, viewers are in for a super-sized helping.
The Channel 4 sitcom – created and penned by Robert Popper – will once again see the Goodman brothers, Adam (Simon Bird) and Jonny (Tom Rosenthal), return to Mum and Dad’s (Tamsin Greig and Paul Ritter) house for a dinner of soup, chicken and crimble crumble. Not to mention side orders of wind-ups and bickering.
Dining out on its fifth series – after nearly two years off-air – has nothing changed?
“People always say ‘fifth series’ with a surprised tone of voice!” quips Rosenthal, 30. “Even my parents are like, ‘Wow!’ So I guess that means it’s quite exciting.”
“I read the script for the pilot and felt like I didn’t even know how we were going to have a second episode,” admits Bird, 33, best-known for his run as the hapless Will McKenzie in the Inbetweeners.
“It was like, ‘OK, so it’s all in the house? It sounds really boring,’ so I guess all the credit goes to Robert for finding ways of being funny within that very restrictive set-up.
“That’s what I like about it,” he adds. “It’s kind of an old-fashioned sitcom in that way, like The Simpsons. It always reverts back as if the previous episode hadn’t happened.”
So starting afresh, what can they tell us to whet our appetite?
We know there’s a hot tub, a dummy and a disastrous party, but it’s safe to say the drama doesn’t end there for the dysfunctional family.
This season will see Adam accidentally set his car on fire, Jonny non-stop prank-calling Adam, oddball neighbour Jim (Mark Heap) on a date from beyond hell with the “Other Jackie” (Rosie Cavaliero); and last, but not least, Horrible Grandma (Rosalind Knight) returning for more horribleness.
Churning out enough fresh ideas for six episodes is not to be scoffed at, note the cast. Yet it’s a feat achieved by the show’s wonderfully “weird” writer.
“He’s mad!” Bird says of Popper, best-known as co-creator of the mock BBC documentary Look Around You. “He’s got such a strange brain.”
“He has so many ideas he’s just a weirdo,” agrees Rosenthal, who has also recently reprised his role of Marcus Gallo in Plebs.
“But it’s very, very fortunate that he can just sit down and concentrate for 10 hours a day to put all of his weird ideas into a Word document.”
Weird, maybe. But the on-screen brothers are adamant they’ll do just about anything for Popper – even if it does mean Bird reverting to a childhood pastime.
“There’s an episode in this [series] where I have to play the violin, which is something my parents used to make me do when I was a kid,” he reveals, having – until now – stayed clear of the instrument for 13 years.
“It was the most frustrated and stressful I’ve ever been [while] filming, because I had to play while talking and walking,” he adds. “There was a bit when I just threw my bow to the floor in a fit of pique!”
“Our trailers are right next to each other and every lunch he’d be doing it for like half an hour,” Rosenthal chimes.
“When I was just getting my little nap, I heard him scratching away going, ‘Godammit!”’ he recalls, laughing. “They made him do it all in one shot. It was very impressive, to be fair. He’s a very good violin player and a very good actor.”
So does the sibling rivalry continue off-camera?
“Simon is the closest I have to a brother,” says only child Rosenthal. “It’s nothing to do with him, it’s because I’m alone. It’s the de facto situation.”
“Whereas, I have lots of siblings so Tom doesn’t really register with me,” responds Bird.
Jokes aside, the pair are firm friends – and colleagues, having also starred alongside one another in Simon Callow’s reworking of Christopher Hampton’s famous play The Philanthropist last year.
“I guess we’re as close as we’re going to get,” argues Rosenthal.
“Weird to say that, isn’t it? We’re friends,” follows Bird. “But we probably won’t do any work together for a while.”
“Yeah it would be weird, because people will start to think we come as a package,” says Rosenthal, before adding: “But if the right offer’s out there, then we’ll come as a pair.”
“I don’t know why we were cast together. I never know why I’m cast in anything,” says Bird. “There are better options out there...
“[But] the play we did was a drama – a funny drama, and those were the bits I liked doing best,” the Guildford-born star explains of the premise. “Making the audience laugh is the best feeling, really.”
Continuing to provide the fun, Rosenthal is now concentrating on Absolutely Fine – a web series he made for Comedy Central.
“I’m just writing a pilot for that and then just drinking coffee and trying to stay alive!” he states.
Meanwhile Bird is “hopefully” directing his first-ever feature film this summer.
“[I’ve] got a script and I think we’ve got funding, so we’re sort of casting at the moment,” he explains. “It’s too early to say it’s happening at this moment but the signs are good.
“It’s a comedy drama; it’s based on a graphic novel called Days Of The Bagnold Summer and it’s about a 15-year-old goth spending holidays with his mum,” he elaborates. “So it’s kind of low-key and understated but hopefully funny and moving.”
Of his move behind the camera, he says: “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always been interested in that side of things, from the first day of doing the Inbetweeners.
“I’m definitely just a control freak,” he confesses. “In acting, you get to do your bit, but that’s like 3% of the whole. Whereas directing, you get to be in charge.”
Friday Night Dinner returns to Channel 4 on Friday, May 4.