Line #38 Series/FridayNightDinner


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/friday_night_dinner_title.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:It's only Friday night dinner! [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong What could go wrong?]]]]
3
4	Friday Night Dinner (2011-2020) is a Creator/Channel4 comedy television series. Once a week, the Goodman family meet up for a Sabbath meal on Friday night.
5
6	The family consists of [[AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents snappy mother Jackie]] (Tasmin Greig), half-deaf hoarding [[CloudCuckooLander father Martin]] (Creator/PaulRitter), and twenty-something sons [[SiblingRivalry Adam and Jonny]] (Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal). HilarityEnsues 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 intrusion of the [[StalkerWithACrush neighbour Jim Bell]] (Mark Heap).
7
8	All this combined into surprisingly elaborate {{Fawlty Towers Plot}}s, which always collapse at the climax of the episode.
9
10	The programme ran for six series [[BritishBrevity of six episodes each.]][[labelnote:*]]except series 2, which has a "Christmas" special that aired around the eponymous holiday.[[/labelnote]] The series can be streamed on Creator/{{Netflix}} in most regions, and can also be streamed for free on [[Creator/Channel4 All4]] (UK only).
11
12	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.
13
14	[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] ''Series/GrandmasHouse'', [[DuelingShows a similar show that aired around the same time, also part of the]] [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative "dysfunctional Jewish family meets for a meal" genre of TV.]]`
15
16	The writers would then move on to make another comedy, ''Series/IHateYou''.
17
18	----
19	!!This show provides examples of:
20
21
22	* AbhorrentAdmirer: Jim towards Jackie, at least in the first few seasons.
23	** Mr Morris towards Nelly. So much so that [[HatedByAll the entire family hates him]], and she ends up faking a heart attack to get out of marrying him.
24	* AbusiveParents: 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 HatedByAll.
25	* TheAllegedCar:
26	** Jonny, a real estate agent, gains access to a company car... shaped like a miniature house.
27	** Adam's car, which ends up ''in flames'' in the episode "The Surprise".
28	* AccidentalMarriage: 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.
29	* AllJewsAreCheapskates: 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.
30	* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: 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.
31	* {{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 mother 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 JewishMother on her son - aided by Auntie Val, on principle.
32	* AnimalsHateHim: Wilson seems to despise Jim, his owner, completely ignoring his commands and growling ominously whenever he touches him. 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.
33	* AnimalLover: Jim likes Wilson and other animals.... but all the animals he's come in contact with don't like him.
34	* AnnoyingLaugh: The other Jackie in "The Other Jackie" laughs every time she finishes a sentence, or if there's a break in the conversation.
35	* AuthorCatchphrase: Simon Bird brings the same deadpan "Brilliant" used by several characters in ''Series/TheInbetweeners'' to this show, where both Adam and Jonny use it.
36	* BaitAndSwitch:
37	** 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 [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything exactly that of a drug addict.]] This is lampshaded by Jonny a minute later.
38	** 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 hair-style is also noticeably more like Jackie's too.
39	* BirthdayEpisode: "Dad's Birthday" is all about Martin being grumpy because an online medical survey told him the exact day he would die.
40	* BlatantLies:
41	** In "The Anniversary" Jonny gets a tattoo that reads "Vive Celer Aoulescens Florece", which apparently means "I love my family" in Latin. Adam quickly translates the phrase online and it actually means "Live Fast and Die Young."
42	** 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.
43	* BrainBleach: Used as the last joke of "The Other Jackie" after seeing Jim naked in their hot tub.
44	* BrickJoke:
45	** In "Congratulations", when asked by Jackie what he knows about his new wife, Jonny struggles to come up with an answer and says [[LineOfSightAlias "she likes apples"]]. Near the end of the episode, Jonny, out of mild curiosity, asks Lisa:
46	---> '''Jonny:''' By the way, do you like apples?\
47	'''Lisa:''' Apples make me heave.\
48	'''Jonny:''' Oh... cool.
49	** In "The Other Jackie" one is built around the Goodman parents' chosen term for sex: nippy nippy.
50	** 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.
51	** 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, in which Jim runs out of the house petrified.
52	* BritishBrevity: The show only has six episodes a series, which even by British sitcom standards is quite a low number. The exception is series 2, which has its final episode be a ChristmasEpisode, aptly title "Christmas". Its LongRunner status at least allowed it to reach 37 episodes altogether however, a decent number for a British comedy.
53	* CharacterCatchphrase: 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:
54	** Martin:
55	--> ''"Hello bambinos."''
56	--> ''"It's boiling!"''
57	--> ''"Lovely bit of squirrel, Jackie."''
58	--> ''"Shit on it!"''
59	** Jim:
60	--> ''"Hello, Jackie, you look nice..."'' or variations thereof, also ''"That smells nice"'', when he turns up just before dinner and then peers expectantly down the hallway as if expecting to be invited in.
61	--> ''"Wilson! Remain..."''
62	--> ''[="ShalooOoOom!"=]'' whenever the family mention they're in the middle of a Jewish tradition.
63	** Jonny:
64	--> ''"Alright, pusface!"'' when greeting Adam
65	** Adam:
66	--> ''"Alright, pissface!"'' when greeting Jonny
67	--> ''"[[SarcasmMode Brilliant.]]"''
68	** Jackie:
69	-->''"MARTIN!"'' whenever Martin says or does something particularly annoying.
70	** Mr. Morris:
71	-->''"Bloody punk rockers!"''
72	* CaptainObvious: Martin often says words like this, replacing certain words, such as "girlfriends" with "females".
73	* CharacterDevelopment: At the beginning of the series Jim is genuinely creepy, but as the show progresses his StalkerWithACrush tendencies are downplayed and he becomes merely eccentric (most of the time, at least).
74	* ChekhovsArmoury: 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.
75	* ChristmasEpisode: In the aptly titled episode "Christmas", Adam [[LampshadeHanging 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 ImmediateSelfContradiction. A RunningGag in the episode also has "Horrible Grandma" pointing out the same thing.
76	* ClusterFBomb: 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.
77	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}:
78	** 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 [[ComicallyMissingThePoint because there's a sign on it]]), and when his dog runs away, he panics "What if someone's raped him?"
79	** Martin’s tendency to have small but annoying eccentricities, to the point of Flanderization in later series.
80	* ComicallySmallBribe:
81	** 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, to which he then bluntly agrees to go on the dating sites with him.
82	** 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.
83	* ComicallyMissingThePoint: 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.
84	* ContinuityNod:
85	** Jonny's awful skull tattoo can be seen when he is forced to take his shirt off in Series 4.
86	** Martin and Jackie's name for sex; "nippy nippy" gets mentioned in Series 6.
87	* CringeComedy: A lot of it, particularly any scene involving [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Jim]].
88	* DeadpanSnarker: Adam and Jonny, usually towards their parents. Other characters do this sometimes, even Martin.
89	* DoomedNewClothes: The new dress Val shows to Jackie is burned in a bonfire by complete accident by Martin.
90	* {{Dissimile}}: Being on a low-calorie diet is equivalent to Nazi Germany, according to Martin.
91	* DistinctionWithoutADifference: 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.
92	* TheDoorSlamsYou: 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.
93	* DropInCharacter: Jim. He knocks on the door of the family OnceAnEpisode for increasingly specific and bizarre reasons.
94	* EmbarrassingNickname: 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.
95	* EmbarrassingRingtone: In "The New Car", Jonny changes Adam's ringtone to a clip of him singing "My balls never dropped" on repeat.
96	* EmbarrassingTattoo: 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.
97	* EpicFail: Martin is so bad at painting that his attempt to paint Jackie for her birthday present has everyone who's seen it hate it.
98	* EscalatingWar: 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.
99	-->'''Grieving guest:''' ''My dad's just died, why are you putting salt in everything?!''
100	* EveryoneHasStandards: Jim may a weird, obnoxious, rude man with NoSocialSkills, but he feels genuinely bad and apologises when he unknowingly invites [[spoiler: a Nazi]] into their home.
101	* {{Expy}}: Two examples with characters played by the same actors. Jim is precisely the same twitchy, asocial pervert that Mark Heap played in ''Series/GreenWing'', 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 ''Series/TheInbetweeners'' five years later.
102	* {{Fanservice}}: An in-universe example. Adam looks away from his mother in lingerie in "The Anniversary".
103	* FanDisservice:
104	** 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.
105	** Mr. Morris ''wrestles'' with his shirt off.
106	** Jackie's mother was at one point seen '''in a bikini'''.
107	%% * FawltyTowersPlot: Every single episode is structured like one.
108	* TheFunInFuneral: 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.
109	* GirlfriendInCanada: Jonny's supposed girlfriend does exist... but she's going out with someone else.
110	* GilliganCut: In "The Tin of Meat", Martin eventually eats his 20 year old "lucky meat", and this comes up:
111	-->'''Martin:''' Actually, it's very nice. It's delicious.\
112	[cut to Martin being wheeled out by an ambulance, having gotten ill from food poisoning after eating the rotten meat]
113	* HatedByAll: 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 [[spoiler: she dies in the middle of a magic trick in "Dad's Birthday", Martin's mournful crying turns into relieved cries of laughter.]]
114	* HateSink: 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. [[spoiler: They don't seem hugely bothered when it actually happens.]]
115	* HelicopterParents: These two can rarely resist poking their noses into their adult sons’ affairs.
116	* HiddenDepths:
117	** 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!").
118	* IdiotHoudini: 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.
119	* IdiotBall: Martin holds the ball the most; in one case he somehow made apple crumble, but forgot to put the apples in.
120	* InsaneTrollLogic:
121	-->'''Mr Morris:''' Well, aren't you going to pay the man?\
122	'''Adam:''' Why do ''we'' have to pay?\
123	'''Mr Morris:''' Because if your grandmother had never existed, your house wouldn't have destroyed my headlamp.\
124	'''Adam:''' [[LampshadeHanging And that's actual logic?]]
125	* InstantlyProvenWrong: 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.
126	* InnocentlyInsensitive: Jim pretty much always acts like this, while Martin sometimes comes off the same way.
127	* InSeriesNickname: 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.
128	* InsistentTerminology: Martin keeps nagging Adam about the lack of "females" in Adam's life.
129	* ItsAllAboutMe: Sheila Bloom, better known as "Bitchface", has some serious vanity problems, and only talks about herself and her lifestyle in conversations with other people.
130	* JerkAss:
131	** Mr. Morris, Grandma's terrifying 84-year-old boyfriend.
132	** Mr. Greencock, the piano tuner. Unfortunately a KarmaHoudini too.
133	** Cynthia, aka Horrible Grandma.
134	* JewishMother: Jackie fits the stereotype. As do grandmothers Cynthia and Nellie when relating to their adult children Martin and Jackie.
135	* LineOfSightAlias: This occurs in two scenes in the episode "The Fox".
136	** The first is Jackie questioning why Martin is lending money to Jim, and Martin replies with "for mirrors", which she then [[LampshadedTrope lampshades.]]
137	** 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.
138	** 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 BrickJoke later on, as when he asks about it out of curiosity, she says they make her heave.
139	* LiterallyLovingThyNeighbor: 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.
140	* LoveAtFirstSight: 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 [[ItMakesSenseInContext frisks Jim's legs]], Jackie is horrified to learn that they are in love.
141	* MadAtADream: 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. [[spoiler: It later turns out that Jackie was angry at Martin because he had a dream about being in a milk bath with [[UsefulNotes/DianaPrincessOfWales Lady Di]]]].
142	* MaleGaze: In "The Date", Martin remarks twice about Tanya Green that "She has a nice bum."
143	* MoodWhiplash: In "Wilson", both Jonny and Adam stop fighting as soon as they hear that [[spoiler: Wilson isn't moving and appears to be dead.]] The entire episode after that point is taken dead seriously.
144	* NoodleIncident: How Jim's dog ate his keys.
145	-->''We were playing a little game. ({{Beat}}) It went wrong.''
146	* NoOSHACompliance: Martin’s caravan, as it's a fire hazard, as well as it not being stabilized properly.
147	* NoSocialSkills:
148	** Jim, to quite a worrying extent.
149	** Martin, in a way that’s rather flanderized in the later series to make him more dumb.
150	* OminouslyOpenDoor: 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.
151	* OnlySaneMan: Adam usually takes this role. Jonny also has his moments.
152	* OneSteveLimit: Averted in two episodes.
153	** 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).
154	** 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 SeriesFinale, Jim comes to believe they are two halves of the same person.
155	** Enforced by Jim when he gets a new dog to replace Wilson; Jim calls her Milson instead.
156	* OverlyNarrowSuperlative: Mr Morris had "the biggest button-sewing business in the Hertfordshire area... until Rutherford's came along".
157	* PerfectlyCromulentWord: "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.
158	* ThePreciousPreciousCar: 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.
159	* PricelessMingVase: As part of the show's ChekhovsArmoury, 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...
160	* PlumbersCrack: Adam is a subversion. He never wears a belt so whenever he bends over, the rim of his boxers peek out. Jonny sometimes gives him wedgies because of it.
161	* RedOniBlueOni: Jonny and Adam.
162	* ReplacementGoldfish: After Wilson's death, Jim gets a new dog and gives her a new name: Milson.
163	* RunningGag: Much of the show's humour comes from the quantity of running gags and {{Chekhovs Gun}}s any given episode has going on at any given time, a fair few showing up OnceAnEpisode, in increasingly roundabout ways:
164	** Martin is shirtless, pantsless, or otherwise semi-naked, invariably because he's "boiling".
165	** Adam and Jonny try to sit on each other on one of the sofas.
166	** 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).
167	** 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).
168	** Martin referring to women as "females" (particularly towards Adam whenever he's trying to give him TheTalk or advising him about dating, feeling he doesn't have to do the same to Jonny because Jonny talks about his girlfriend a lot).
169	** "Crimble crumble!" (Jim and the Goodmans' family named for crumble.).
170	** Jim can't tell Adam and Jonny apart, though this trait is dropped after the third series.
171	** Martin's mother, "Horrible Grandma", insulting Jackie's hair.
172	** Jonny going in the cupboards to fill his mouth with whipped cream, straight from the can, and almost always being called out on it.
173	** 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.
174	** 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.
175	** In "The Dress", Val looks and dresses exactly like Jackie, but neither ever notice. It's constantly lampshaded by everyone else, to the point [[TooDumbToFool Martin was the person to notice it.]]
176	** 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.
177	** In "The Other Jackie", [[SexualEuphemism "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".
178	** 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.
179	** 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.
180	** 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, [[CloudCuckoolander of all people]], says the phrase when he learns of it.
181	*** The episode also had blue masking tape being used to tape various thing around the house.
182	** 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.
183	* StrictlyFormula: Any given episode structure usually has the same story beats and [[RunningGag running gags]]:
184	** '''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 Bambino's". 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).
185	** '''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 SeinfeldianConversation. Jim then leaves, often perplexing everyone else.
186	** '''The End''': The episode will always end when the night falls apart due to either a ChekhovsGun finally being fired, or the main conflict reaches it's climax in a magnificent way.
187	* SeriesFauxnale: Series 6's final episode; "The Females", was written to act as one, in case the show never got renewed by ''Creator/Channel4''. The writer and producer; Robert Popper, went on record that [[https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/11528569/friday-night-dinner-season-7-another-series/ the show might come back,]] but the surprise death of Creator/PaulRitter in April of 2021 probably means it's finished for good.
188	* SignificantNameOverlap: Adam and Jonny both acquire girlfriends at the same time, much to their mother's delight. Unfortunately, both girls are named Lucy.
189	* SitcomArchNemesis: A very passive-aggressive variation between Jackie and "Bitchface".
190	* SleepingWithTheBoss: Jonny in "The Yoghurts", and much of the episode is trying to get the courage to break up with her, primarily because they're quite a bit older.
191	* SpoilerTitle: PlayedWith: The title of an episode generally correlates to the primary RunningGag of said episode, such as in "The Mercedes", where there it was that Sheila "Bitchface" Bloom adores her Mercedes.
192	* StatusQuoIsGod: None of the romantic interests on the series seem to last beyond an episode or two.
193	* SuspectIsHatless: When the Goodmans are burgled, Jim describes the thief thus: "He was a man, very manly, probably had a winky."
194	* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: 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.
195	* TackyTuxedo: Jim wears one in "The Mouse" after being invited to dinner.
196	* TechnologicallyBlindElders: 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 another episode he gives up the computer to buy a fax machine, which he believes is "the future". Similarly, he also tried online shopping for the first time and had bought items in huge quantities (100 tomatoes, 100 bleach bottles, 100 ketchup bottles).
197	* {{Title Drop}}: Happens on the odd occasion (it is a common descriptor, after all):
198	--> '''Jim:''' ''Friday Night Dinner with you! And...the others.''
199	* ThisIsGonnaSuck: 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.
200	* TookALevelInJerkass: Horrible Grandma was always horrible, but became even more openly vile in series six [[spoiler: during her final appearance in "Dad's Birthday," which ended with her surprising death.]]
201	* TransAtlanticEquivalent: An American pilot was shot in 2011, featuring Creator/TonyShalhoub and Creator/AllisonJanney, but it wasn't picked up.
202	* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Martin has a fondness for ketchup, while Jonny eats whipped cream straight from the can.
203	* UnusualEuphemism:
204	** Jim calls Wilson's dog excrement "dollops" in "Wilson".
205	** Valorie, Adam, Jonny and Martin call Jackie's delicate surgery a "woman's procedure".
206	** Jackie and Martin call sex "nippy-nippy". (Possibly to [[ParentalSexualitySquick avoid grossing out their sons]], but it's so obvious what they're talking about that it doesn't work at all).
207	* VitriolicBestBuds: 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.
208	* VocalEvolution: 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.
209	* WalkingShirtlessScene:
210	** Martin is a FanDisservice variation on the trope.
211	** The eighty-four-year-old Mr Morris manages to top him by ''wrestling'' bare-chested.
212	* WalkieTalkieGagOver: 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 RunningGag 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).
213	%% * WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Or wolves, in this case. Jim is terrified of them.
214	* YiddishAsASecondLanguage: 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.

Context Series / FridayNightDinner