Michaela Watkins & Dan Bakkedahl To Headline ‘Dinner With The Parents’ Freevee Comedy Series

Nellie Andreeva
·2 min read
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Michaela Watkins (Casual, The Dropout) and Veep alum Dan Bakkedahl will lead the cast of Amazon Freevee’s series Dinner with the Parents, a remake of the long-running British comedy Friday Night Dinner, which is being produced by CBS Studios and Big Talk.

In the single-camera Dinner with the Parents, which has a straight-to-series order, two brothers in their 20s go to their mom (Watkins) and dad’s (Bakkedahl) for dinner each week and somehow get through it without actually, physically, dying of embarrassment.

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Bakkedahl plays the dad, Harvey Langer, a “dad joke” in human form. He a suburban dentist trying to fend off a midlife crisis by wearing aloha shirts and playing in a garage band called the Spin Dentists. Desperate for attention, Harvey finds a way to make every Friday night about him.

Watkins plays the mom, Jane Langer. She just left a teaching job after 25 years and is now looking for her second act… and trying way too hard to “help” her romantically-challenged son David find a mate.

Jon Beckerman exec produces and serves as showrunner with Big Talk’s Kenton Allen and Matthew Justice and creator of the UK series Robert Popper and Caroline Leddy. Tristram Shapeero will direct and exec produce.

The acclaimed UK series starred Tamsin Greig as the mother and Paul Ritter as the father. It ended after its sixth season following the death of Ritter.

There have been several attempts to remake the series in the U.S., including one led by Greg Daniels on NBC, with Allison Janney and Tony Shalhoub as the parents. It went to pilot in 2012.

Saturday Night Live alumna Watkins stars opposite Julia Louis Dreyfus in Nicole Holofcener’s upcoming feature, You Hurt My Feelings. Watkins also just wrapped the Hulu limited series Tiny Beautiful Things, opposite Kathryn Hahn. She is repped by UTA, Haven Entertainment and Felker Toczek.

Bakkedahl’s most recent series credits include HBO Max’s Made For Love, FX’s Impeachment: American Crime Story, Amazon’s Tales From the Loop, Netflix’s Space Force and ABC’s The Goldbergs. He is known for playing Rep. Roger Furlong on Veep. He is repped by Gersh and Authentic Talent & Literary Management.

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