The Dinner Party

Sunday 13th of September at 10pm

Think the sound of an evening soiree in the leafy-green suburbs sounds hellish? Well, with the guests assembled in Tony Grounds' hilarious The Dinner Party you'd certainly be right, but they don't half make for a great slice of cringeworthy drama.

Having already penned the acclaimed Births, Marriages and Deaths and A Class Apart, Tony Grounds turns his attention on that most English of traditions; the dinner party. With a great guestlist coming for supper, including Rupert Graves, Alison Steadman and Jessie Wallace, our hosts for the evening reside in the most desirable part of their village, unlike their guests.

With snobbery, back-biting and social faux-pas only ever one glass of wine away, what begins as an ever-so-polite get together soon becomes a minefield of catty comments and boorish boasting.

Everyone admires a self-made man, especially when he's the one pouring the vino, but Roger, played by Graves, makes himself increasingly difficult to love, thanks in no small part to his industrial levels of showing off.

And talking of small parts, his wife, The Shrew, is always on hand to burst his bubble when it comes to matters of the flesh, as an increasingly tense evening quickly descends into a laugh-out-loud farce, which will leave you thanking your lucky stars for TV-dinners.