Yes, chef! No, cousin! Season two of the Chicago kitchen drama The Bear is another pan-rattling triumph in tight, white T-shirts. The Copenhagen pilgrimage and the fork-cleaning episode are standout moments, but the star-studded flashback story, Fishes, is the show’s awards-baiting centrepiece. Spoilers, and cannolis, ahead [do not read on unless you have watched season two, episode six of The Bear]…
Set five years before The Original Beef is due to reopen, the extended episode brings together the Berzatto family for Christmas dinner. Brooding Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) has returned home – begrudgingly – from Copenhagen; his highly strung, chain-smoking, wine-sodden mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), is frantically and frenetically preparing a meal based on the feast of the seven fishes, with kitchen timers going off left, right and centre, the culinary chaos building to an almost unbearable level. The result is a frazzled 66 minutes of fork-throwing and recriminations that is almost unbearably tense.
It is no wonder that screenwriters adore an awkward dinner party – it is a chance to pile all the characters into a pressure cooker until it explodes. With that in mind, we have selected our favourite TV dinners, from The Sopranos to The White Lotus (with an honourable mention for Come Dine With Me’s “What a sad little life, Jane” episode). Bon appétit!
Fleabag’s dinner showdown
“This is a love story.” Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s genre-defining sadcom kicked off its second season with a dysfunctional family gathering in a swish restaurant, the camera panning around the table, picking up subtle looks and unspoken tensions. Father announced his engagement to god-awful Godmother (Olivia Colman), who dispensed her usual pass-agg barbs. Fleabag’s sister, Claire (Sian Clifford), hadn’t spoken to her for a year. Her vile husband gloated about being on the wagon, then got drunk. Fleabag punched him in the nose. The waitress took an elbow to the face. Fleabag covered up Claire’s miscarriage by claiming it was hers. Crucially, the Emmy-nominated scene marked the introduction of Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest [looks to camera].
Doctor Foster’s affair accusation
Mike Bartlett’s modern-day remix of the myth of Medea reached its melodramatic peak in the season one finale. Suranne Jones’s GP, Gemma, and her cheating husband, Simon (Bertie Carvel), were press-ganged into an impromptu pasta supper at his secret investor’s house. Simmering with righteous anger, Gemma exacted public revenge for Simon’s affair with the host’s daughter, Kate (a young Jodie Comer), across the dinner table, announcing that not only had Kate aborted Simon’s baby, but that Simon and her father were doing dodgy business deals. “A bitch is right,” she said, “and I’m a wolf tonight.” Having dropped her truth bombs, she sashayed out in slo-mo. Not staying for pud?
This Is England’s Sunday roast
The final chapter of Shane Meadows’ opus moved on to 1990 and the summer of rave. Yet it was a non-smiley sign when Lol (Vicky McClure) and Woody (Joe Gilgun) invited the gang round for Sunday lunch. They were hardly the entertaining types. After the roast chicken, they falteringly announced that it wasn’t Combo (Stephen Graham) who had killed her father, Mick, in 1986 but Lol. She also told her disbelieving sister Kelly (Chanel Cresswell) that Mick had raped their mate Trev and tried to rape Lol before she beat him to death with a hammer. Oh, and Combo was about to be released from prison and would be moving in with them. Raw, semi-improvised and punctuated by the sounds of sobbing, it was devastatingly bleak.
Game of Thrones’ murderous marriage
“The Lannisters send their regards.” Does the Red Wedding count as a meal? The banquet bloodbath after the union of Edmure Tully (Tobias Menzies) and Roslin Frey (Alexandra Dowling) was certainly awkward, considering that hundreds of guests – most notably the Starks and their bannermen – were unceremoniously slaughtered. The ones who survived probably won’t be sharing happy memories any time soon. It was so unbearable that its creator, George RR Martin, couldn’t bring himself to watch it, joking that he would “visit a country with no television when the episode goes out”.
Dexter’s deadly Thanksgiving
Two serial killers dining together; what could be more normal? John Lithgow’s “Trinity Killer”, AKA the unassuming church deacon Arthur Mitchell, proved a worthy adversary for Michael C Hall’s forensics vigilante. Dexter saw him as a potential mentor, but, during a Thanksgiving dinner, witnessed the abusive hold that the twisted Mitchell had over his family. Raging that nobody said they were thankful for him, Mitchell called his wife a C-bomb, kept his daughter locked in her bedroom, deliberately broke his son’s finger and then tried to strangle him – until Dexter put a belt around his neck and dragged him off. Happy Thanksgiving. Pass the yams.
The Sopranos’ sibling spat
“You know what they say: revenge is like serving cold cuts.” When Tony (James Gandolfini) joined his combustible sister Janice (Aida Turturro) and her boyfriend, Bobby Baccalieri (Steve Schirripa), for Sunday lunch, her newfound domestic calm rubbed him up the wrong way. He decided to goad her with sarcastic taunts about her estranged son, Harpo. True enough, Janice snapped and ended up chasing Tony out of the house with a fork in her fist. He gave a sly smile as he left, while the soundtrack blasted out the Kinks’ live version of I’m Not Like Everybody Else.
Normal People’s Tuscan nightmare
Ah, the love story of lockdown. (Not you, Tiger King.) When silver-chained Dublin student Connell (Paul Mescal) went backpacking around Europe, he stopped off at the dreamy rural villa in Italy owned by the parents of Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones), while Marianne was holidaying there with her dreadful new boyfriend, Jamie. During an alfresco spaghetti supper, chit-chat opened with a squabble over champagne glasses and went downhill from there. Jamie’s jealousy, snobbery and controlling nature became glaringly apparent, culminating in a demand for cream to go with his strawberries and a deliberately dropped wine glass. Marianne turned to Connell for protection and comfort; their romance was reignited.
Succession’s hog-roast humiliation
“Boar on the Floor! Oink for your sausages, piggies!” Waystar RoyCo’s corporate retreat to a Hungarian hunting lodge turned into a humiliating witch-hunt. Somebody within the company had leaked the plan to buy Pierce Global Media and fed intel to his unofficial biographer. The furious patriarch, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), ended an opulent feast by bullying Greg (Nicholas Braun), Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Karl (David Rasche) into crawling on the floor like pigs grunting for his approval. When Roman tried to film the sadistic spectacle, Kendall snatched his phone and they ended up squabbling like super-rich schoolboys. “It’s fun!” bellowed Logan. Is it, though?
The White Lotus’ dinnertime penis chat
The hotel satire’s season two premiere introduced us to three generations of Di Grasso men, via an eye-wateringly frank discussion of male libido. The lecherous grandfather, Bert (F Murray Abraham), proudly informed his grandson that he still got erections at 80, advised him to “jerk off every day so you don’t get backed up” and compared penises to sunsets. In awkward White Lotus meal stakes, its only rival is season one’s breakfast, when the privileged Mossbacher family addressed mixed-race Paula (Brittany O’Grady)’s discomfort at a traditional Hawaiian dance show for rich, white hotel guests. “Look, obviously, imperialism was bad,” blustered the patriarch, Mark (Steve Zahn). “You shouldn’t kill people, steal their land, then make them dance. But welcome to history. Welcome to America.” Riiight.
• This article was amended on 27 July 2023. Fleabag’s brother-in-law gloated about being on the wagon, not off.
