Every Friday, brothers Adam and Jonny Goodman return to their childhood home in North London for a meal that reliably disintegrates into chaos. Their mother Jackie hovers with scented candles and passive-aggressive salads, while father Martin stalks the kitchen shirtless, brandishing a carving knife and hoarding obscure condiments. The brothers spend the evening tormenting each other—salt in the water glass, a phone hidden in the kugel—until petty pranks escalate into full-scale domestic warfare.
The real disruption arrives from next door: Jim, a divorced, tracksuited oddball who drifts in uninvited, clutching his dog Wilson and delivering news of blocked drains or minor car accidents. His visits stretch the family's patience while exposing the fragile civility that props up their rituals. Episodes follow a near-musical structure: arrival, escalating skirmish, catastrophic climax, hasty retreat, with the final shot usually on the street as the brothers flee back to their own flats.
Robert Popper's scripts mine the tiny humiliations of returning to your parents' house as a supposed adult—bedrooms turned into gyms, childhood photos repurposed as coasters, the persistent smell of pickled herring. The humour is both affectionate and merciless, recognising that families rehearse the same arguments forever because they have no new material. After six series and Paul Ritter's death in 2021, the Goodman table remains one of British comedy's most precisely observed crucibles of love and irritation.
Production Details
Channel 4 / 6 Seasons / 37 Episodes / 2011
Created by: Robert Popper
Showrunner(s): Nira Park, Kenton Allen, Caroline Leddy
Writer(s): Robert Popper
Producer(s): Robert Popper
Main Cast
Simon Bird as Adam Goodman
Tom Rosenthal as Jonny Goodman
Tamsin Greig as Jackie Goodman
Paul Ritter as Martin Goodman
Mark Heap as Jim
Tracy-Ann Oberman as Val Lewis
Frances Cuka as Nellie Buller
Rosalind Knight as Cynthia Goodman
Harry Landis as Lou Morris
Paul McNeilly as Landlord
Tuppence Middleton as Tanya
Lesley Vickerage as Liz
