TV pick: Friday Night Dinner's awkward ensemble

Paul Ritter says many of the Goodman's Friday family shenanigans are based on real life. He talks to Chris Schulz.

It features two comedy legends in Black Books' Tamsin Greig and The Inbetweeners' Simon Bird, and stars a deaf shirtless dad who likes to keep dead foxes in the freezer.

But Paul Ritter, who plays dodgy dad Martin Goodman in UK comedy show Friday Night Dinner, says the sitcom's biggest scene stealer is Mark Heap, as Jim Bell, the neighbour from hell.

"They say comedy's a serious business and we have to get a lot done in a shortish time. There isn't a lot of trying to make each other crack up on the show," says Ritter.

"But Mark Heap as Jim often has us repeating takes because we can't quite believe what he's done next."

That's likely to continue in the show's third season, a study in family awkwardness that screens on Thursday nights here, with repeats on Saturday.

It follows the exploits of the Goodman family and the mayhem that ensues every Friday night when they gather for a meal together.

Greig plays uptight mum Jackie and Bird plays her awkward, picked-upon son Adam - a character not dissimilar to his roll on The Inbetweeners.

But it's Bell's cameo in most episodes who often steals scenes with his stuttering random requests. Ritter says one incident this season involves Bell swallowing his dog's sleeping pills.

Surprisingly, many of the show's best moments are taken from creator Robert Popper's real life experiences, says Ritter.

"You'd be amazed and alarmed at how much of it is lifted wholesale from his own life. It's kind of autobiographical in a really disturbing way."

That includes a scene in the first season in which a man comes to buy the family's sofa bed, only for it to get stuck when they're moving it down a stairwell, leaving everyone trapped in the upstairs part of the house.

It's then that the man buying the couch receives a phone call telling him his father has died.

"That all happened when Robert was about 19. He just stuck it in an episode. He's just lifted chaotic episodes from his own growing up time and transferred them to this family."

Ritter, best known for his stint as Eldred Worple in 2009 Harry Potter film The Half-Blood Prince, has also built up his own fanbase. That's thanks to his wayward antics, catch phrases like, "Shit on it!" and for inexplicably taking his shirt off at inappropriate times.

"Lots of the mannerisms come from my own dear old departed dad. He was a very funny guy as well. There comes a point where we all turn into our dads and I'm well down that road at this point."

Friday Night Dinner has been so successful, a fourth season is being talked about and American network NBC commissioned a pilot starring Tony Shalhoub and directed by The Office's Greg Daniels.

It wasn't picked up, but Ritter says a second attempt is being made, with Popper taking on responsibility - and no doubt upping the awkwardness.

Who: Paul Ritter
What: Friday Night Dinner's third season
Where and when: UK TV, Thursdays, 9.25pm; repeated Saturday 10.45pm.

- nzherald.co.nz