Review by Justin Bateman
Stars Lee Mack, Tim Vine, Sally Bretton, Katy Wix | Written by Lee Mack and others
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £19.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 230 minutes | Directed by Nick Wood
This BBC-commissioned sitcom, essentially a vehicle for stand-up comedian Lee Mack, very nearly didn’t make it to a fourth series and at one point had officially been cancelled. One can only presume this was due to budgetary reasons because since its award-winning first series audience figures have if anything steadily increased. Having loved the first three series, I was delighted to see this back on our screens but while there are still some chucklesome lines, this is undoubtedly the weakest of the four.
The set-up, of those of you yet to catch it, is that Lee (Mack) is a lazy, jobless, smart-arse who lives with Lucy (Bretton), sister of his best friend Tim (Vine). Naturally, Lee fancies Lucy but at least partly due to his wastrel tendencies, the feeling is not exactly mutual. As a result almost all of the farcial situations Lee (and invariably Tim as well) get into are due to his unrequited love for Lucy.
It’s hard to pinpoint precisely where Not Going Out has lost its way but I’d wager that not continuing to employ Andrew Collins as a writing partner to Mack was an error in judgement. By far the most coherent plots and character-based comedy appear in the episodes in which he was involved and as time has gone by, his discipline has been used less and less. Maybe we’re back to budgets but it’s a shame because although Mack’s trademark quickfire quips remain, much of the structure and originality appears to be lacking.
Fortunately, Tim Vine’s posh boy accountant is as charming and funny as ever while Katy Wix’s impossibly stupid Daisy veers between hilarious and infuriating. I may be imagining it but in this series there seems to be an increasing reliance on numerous peripheral characters in order to make the stories work, which to me smacks of a quickly diminishing shelf life for the lead character.
Having said all this, Not Going Out is still one of the funniest sitcoms on television. Lee’s impression of The Proclaimers (both of them) in the episode ‘Dancing’ is genius, while the TV show/drug puns in ‘Drugs’ are classic Mack wordplay at its finest. But while there are still a decent number of laugh-out loud moments, there’s no shaking the feeling that the best of this show is in the past rather than the future.
EXTRAS ★★ Not Going Right, The Out-takes (35:00) – Bloopers from all four series of Not Going Out