Allison Janney and Tony Shalhoub will star as the quirky-not-Jewish parents in NBC's Friday Night Dinner

Aux Features TV

Allison Janney and Tony Shalhoub—two of our nation’s finest character actors, last seen romancing each other in Big Night—are set to reunite over a meal once again at NBC, where they’ve just been cast as the leads in Greg Daniels’ Friday Night Dinner adaptation. Shalhoub and Janney will play married couple Gene and Barbara, the heads of a family that makes it an imperative to get together over dinner at the end of every week. And hopefully Shalhoub and Janney’s combined heaps of Emmys will further obscure the fact that NBC is still pitching its version of the British series as concerning a “quirky” family, rather than the explicitly Jewish one coming together for the traditional Sabbath meal, which was the impetus of the original show. But until Americans are ready to accept Jews in comedy, this will have to do.

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