Carol Kane, YouTuber Daniel Thrasher and Julia Louis-Dreyfus's son Henry join Dinner With The Parents

Chortle can today exclusively reveal the core cast for the US remake of Friday Night Dinner, which began shooting this week.

Filming on Dinner With The Parents started on Monday at the recently opened Winnersh Studios near Reading, with a mix of established comedy performers and upcoming talent.

Ten episodes are being made for the Amazon Freevee streaming platform, based on creator Robert Popper’s original Channel 4 scripts. The series will be set in the US but filmed here because it's cheaper.

Here are the cast:

LONG-SUFFERING MOM

UK: Tamsin Greig as Jackie Goodman
US: Michaela Watkins as Jane Langer

Ex-Saturday Night Live cast member Watkins, who played Rob Delaney's sister in Catastrophe. She played the central character in 2015 Hulu series Casula while other credits include The New Adventures of Old Christine, Enlightened and Search Party 

ECCENTRIC DAD

UK: Paul Ritter as Martin Goodman
US: Dan Bakkedahl as Harvey Langer

Former Daily Show correspondent Bakkedahl played Congressman Roger Furlong in Veep, who was outwardly a devout Christian, but verbally bullied his hapless aide whenever cameras or his wife weren't present. He’s also had recurring comedy roles in ABC’s  The Goldbergs, HBO Max’s Made for Love and Netflix’s Space Force.

GRANDMOTHER

UK: Frances Cuka
US: Carol Kane

The sitcom veteran won two Emmy Awards for her role in Taxi as Simka Grava, wife of Andy Kaufman's loveable mechanic Latka. More recently, she starred as the eccentric but streetwise landlady Lillian, as part of the main cast of  Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Her credits include Annie Hall, Dog Day Afternoon and Hester Street, for which she earned an Oscar nomination for best actress. It’s not clear whether Kane plays Cuka’s role, or the less commonly recurring ‘Horrible Grandmother’ part played by Rosalind Knight in the UK original.

ODDBALL NEIGHBO(U)R

UK: Mark Heap as Jim
US: Jon Glaser

Glaser is best known in the UK for his sleazy performance on Parks and Recreation as Leslie Knope's nemesis, Councilman Jeremy Jamm. He was also a writer and sketch performer on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and played Laird on the HBO series Girls.

THE TWENTYSOMETHING SONS

UK: Tom Rosenthal and Simon Bird as Jonny and Adam Goodman
US: Daniel Thrasher and Henry Hall

Rosenthal lookalike Thrasher is a musical and sketch comedian who has more than three million subscribers on YouTube and two million on TikTok.

Hall is an acting newcomer – although he made a brief appearance on Veep, which may be linked to him being the eldest son of the show's star Julia Louis-Dreyfus. His background as a composer neatly echoes that of Bird's character Adam, who is a  musician and writer of advertising  jingles.

Former David Letterman scribe Jon Beckerman has written Dinner With The Parents and is acting as showrunner

The logline reads: ‘In this half-hour single camera comedy, two brothers in their 20s who go to their mom and dad’s for dinner each week, somehow get through it without actually, physically, dying of embarrassment. If your 54-year-old dad has ever "dabbed" while shirtless in front of your girlfriend, or your mom won’t stop bringing up that time when you had to be rushed to the paediatrician after an incident with a shampoo bottle, which is why your brother still calls you "Pert Plus," you will relate to this show. If not, must be nice!’

The Amazon version is the fourth American attempt to adapt Popper's loosely autobiographical sitcom, based upon his middle-class secular Jewish upbringing.

A 2011 remake got as far as being shot for NBC with Mom’s Allison Janney and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel's Tony Shalhoub in the parental roles, while rivals CBS tried again in 2014 and 2016.

The British series, which ran for six seasons from 2011 to 2020, received several Bafta nominations, including a posthumous nod for Ritter for best male comedy performance following his death last year.

- by Jay Richardson

Made by: Big Talk and CBS Studios
Writer and showrunner: Jon Beckerman
Executive producers: Robert Popper Popper, Caroline Leddy, Kenton Allen, Matthew Justice, Tristram Shapeero
Director: Tristram Shapeero

Published: 28 Oct 2022