Comedy stars sit down for a new TV dinner

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12 April 2012

Top names from TV comedy will appear in a new sitcom inspired by Jewish family life in north London.

Tamsin Greig of Green Wing and Black Books, Simon Bird from teen hit The Inbetweeners, and Paul Ritter of Pulling are all in Friday Night Dinner, starting on Channel 4 next week.

The comedy is written and produced by Robert Popper, a former commissioning editor at the TV station and the man behind left-field hits such as Spaced and Bo' Selecta! He also produced Peep Show and worked on South Park.

Now he is moving into the comedy mainstream with a series inspired by growing up in a non-religious Jewish family in Edgware. The 43-year-old said he aimed to renew the family sitcom format and make it "real".

Ritter, the father of the Goodman family who drinks ketchup straight from the bottle and wanders the house topless, is based on Popper's own dad. The writer told how when Mr Popper saw the preview, he said: "Yes, that's me."

But most is pure invention: "I'm not writing my family, it's vaguely like my family. There's something that happens with grandma and a dog that definitely didn't happen in real life."

Greig plays the mother, Bird is older son Adam, and stand-up comedian Tom Rosenthal, 23 - son of sports presenter Jim - makes his TV debut as younger boy Jonny.

The series has its roots in Popper's time as a Channel 4 commissioner, when he backed hits such as Black Books and Bremner, Bird and Fortune. He regaled colleagues with stories of visits home with his brother for the traditional Jewish Friday night dinner. They told him he should do something with the tales some day.

He eventually quit commissioning to concentrate on writing and proposed the show, which will start at 10pm next Friday.

Rosenthal, who lives in Islington, beat 140 others to win his part and said it was "a dream" to join the cast: "Everyone else is really well-known."

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