Surprising Success
British sitcoms that are both high quality and highly popular have been a rare breed in the last few years, so it was with some trepidation that I approached Not Going Out, the latest in a series of BBC1, Friday night comedies in the tradition of My Hero (awful since the first episode) and My Family (started well, but never the same after Kris Marshall left). Penned by famous talking head from many a “list show”, Andrew Collins and sketch show regular, Lee Mack, they have created what is essentially a series of gags with a linking narrative but these gags happen to be genuinely funny (on the death of his gran, Tim: “I thought she’d live to be 100″, Lee: “Were you close”, Tim: “Well, she got to 94″). So much for comedy, but it is the situation that adds a little depth to the procedings, there is an interesting love triangle between the three leads. Tim and Lee are best friends; Kate and Tim used to date but broke up because Tim had an affair; and Lee has moved in with Kate for mutually beneficial financial reasons (although he holds not quite buried feeling for her too). It may not be high art but there a laugh out loud moments every few minutes and that cannot be a bad thing.
Tags: Andrew-Collins, BBC1, Comedy, Lee-Mack, My-Family, My-Hero, Not-Going-Out, Tim-Vine
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[...] The Friday night comedy slot on BBC1 is always a successful one and, seemingly, this is regardless of the quality of the product on offer (see, My Hero as prime example). The latest effort is After You’ve Gone, starring Nicholas Lyndhurst and Celia Imrie and it follows in the footsteps of the really rather good Not Going Out, so it had a lot to live up to in my book. There were some positives such as Nicholas Lyndhurst. He is one of those actors to whom I have a knee-jerk reaction ofquiet dislike, but any conversation about him ends up like that sketch in Life Of Brian: “What has Nicholas Lyndhurst ever done for us?” “There’s Only Fools and Horses” “Of course, that goes without saying” “And Goodnight Sweetheart” “Well clearly, but other than those what has he ever done?” “Butterflies” “Yeah but apart from Only Fools, Goodnight Sweetheart, and Butterflies…” etc [...]