Beautiful and very funny too
Richard writes...
ONE of the compensations of coming late to what turns out to be a fantastic TV series is catching repeats. BBC1 is re-running an earlier series of Not Going Out, starring Lee Mack, Tim Vine and Sally Bretton. NGO is the funniest sitcom in years. The plot’s simple enough: Mack plays an itinerant ice-cream man lodging with his best mate’s sister. He fancies her rotten (unsurprising: Sally Bretton is luminously beautiful) to the fury of her brother (Vine).
The gags and set pieces are some of the best we’ve seen, easily on a par with classy American series such as Frasier. There are four writers, led by Mack, and that’s key – the top US comedies all have lots of writers and most UK sitcoms rely on just one. If you haven’t caught it yet I urge you to give it a go. It’ll brighten up your week.