Most critics warm to Friday Night Dinner, and the praise gathers around the same things: the weekly dinner that goes wrong in the same ways, the family’s specific habits, and the cast. Paul Ritter’s Martin is the performance named most often, with the parents and sons admired as an ensemble. Several reviews argue that the repetition is the point rather than a weakness, and that the show gets its laughs from how reliably the evening falls apart.
The reservations cluster on whether the premise can carry a series. The Guardian finds the opening episode underwhelming and not funny enough for its cast, and Radio Times thinks the farce wears thin quickly. The Telegraph goes furthest, calling one series bleak and a catastrophe, chiefly for a subplot involving a child. The spread is wide, and it runs with time: the coolest notices judge the first episode, while the warmest look back over the whole run. Mark Heap’s neighbour divides them too.