Tom Rosenthal

Rosenthal has spent his career inside two shows that each ran the better part of a decade, which produces a rare and slightly odd kind of success: enormous familiarity in Britain, near invisibility everywhere else. From 2011 to 2020 he was Jonny Goodman in Friday Night Dinner, one of two grown sons in a family sitcom built almost entirely out of repetition and pettiness, where the comedy comes from adult men reverting to being nine years old the moment they walk through their parents' door. From 2013 to 2022 he was Marcus in Plebs, playing the anxious one in a Roman flatshare comedy.

Both parts use the same instrument, and use it well. He is very good at the character who believes he is the sensible person in the room and demonstrably is not, and he plays humiliation without asking for sympathy, which is harder than it looks and is why two shows could keep going back to the same well.

Away from the sitcoms he writes and performs stand-up, three shows so far, the last of them, Manhood, well received at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. The rest of the screen work is small: a researcher in a Bridget Jones sequel, a supporting turn in the caper Operation Fortune, a role in the horror series Red Rose, a voice part in Thunderbirds Are Go!, and a stretch on British panel and roast formats where the stand-up half of him is more visible.