FRIDAY

FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER

Channel 4, 10pm

Almost two years since the last episode of the fourth series, Friday Night Dinner is back for a fifth, which promises to be every bit as good as those that went before. There are no changes to the cast, with Tamsin Greig, Paul Ritter, Simon Bird, Tom Rosenthal and Mark Heap, pictured below, all back on board, and Robert Popper still masterminding the scripts – meaning the daft set-ups and farcical storylines will remain intact. Throughout the series we can expect Jonny (Rosenthal) relentlessly prankcalling his long-suffering brother Adam (Bird), Adam’s car catching fire, Mum (Greig) organising her own terrible surprise party, and Dad (Ritter) becoming obsessed with his creepy old ventriloquist’s dummy.

Popper jokes: “I’m thrilled to be making a fifth series, and to be taking the show in a completely new and radical direction. Friday Night Dinner 5 will be shot entirely in black and white, with the family now living and working on a barge in the North Sea. In addition, all actors will have their voices pitch-shifted three octaves higher, with the exception of Mark Wahlberg, whose voice remains the same”. So it’s business as usual, then...

In this week’s opener, Mum and Dad get a hot tub – much to the horror of Adam and Jonny, who already despair at their parents’ antics as it is – and neighbour Jim fobs off his menacing dog Wilson on the family – ostensibly because his sister is coming to visit, but the family learn he’s actually got a date. The concept of Jim (Heap) actually managing to secure a date might seem as far fetched as some of Popper’s previous comments, but rest assured, the nightmarenext-door shows no signs of toning down his oddball behaviour – and his new beau (Rosie Cavaliero) doesn’t exactly seem like a dream catch either. It’s hardly a surprise, then, when the evening ends in disaster for all concerned... a strong pedigree. The plot, too, is rather compelling – we find the world as we know it at an end, due to a deadly virus that’s carried by the rain. Six years on from the catastrophe, two siblings emerge from their bunker to find a very different society than the one from which they were forced to hide...

SUPERSTITION

Netflix

Fresh from the US where it aired on SyFy last year, this spooky supernatural drama stars Mario Van Peebles as Isaac Hastings, the head of a family running the only funeral home and cemetery in the small town of La Rochelle, Georgia – however, both La Rochelle and the Hastings family hide some pretty dark secrets. As the series unfold, we learn more of the Hastings’ supernatural abilities – including offering services to those unfortunate people killed by demons – and how they act as keepers of the town’s unusual past. So far, so daft, but if you suspend your disbelief then Superstition is actually great fun, and deeply atmospheric. Van Peebles directed most of the episodes himself, as well as having a hand in some of the scripts.

END GAME

Netflix

A moving and thought-provoking documentary from acclaimed Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Times of Harvey Milk, The Celluloid Closet, Paragraph 175) asks questions about a subject long considered taboo: the end of life. When it comes to planning for the death of a loved one, two medical facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area seem to be at the forefront, considering how to confront difficult decisions about end-of-life care, and how to treat people facing death with dignity. In a powerful film, Epstein and Friedman find out how these facilities consider such dilemmas as who will be in the room when a loved one passes, and how their feelings – or perhaps even long-held secrets – can best be conveyed.