Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Lee Mack, Sally Bretton, Ray Fearon, Eileen O’Brien, Mike Wozniak, Angela McHale, Philip Correia, Laurence Howarth, Felicity Montague, Lu Corfield, Matthew Kelly, Ed Jones, Manpreet Bambra, Margret Cabourn-Smith, Diana Vickers, Dean Coulson.
No matter how good an addition the three children to the family dynamic in Not Going Out were, the opportunity for the show to reinvent itself for a third time and be the beacon for some truly quality farce is not only welcome, it is a necessity of a mainstream channel to highlight a programme capable of bringing the backbone of humour to life.
With everybody from series past quietly placed in comedy limbo, with only Lee Mack and Sally Breton returning to the show, that reinvention is given a fierce and creative kick, and whilst especially the absence of Hugh Dennis and Abigail Cruttenden is especially felt, time must move on, and it gives the main pair, Lee Mack who has been in in the series from the beginning, and Ms. Bretton from the start of the second series, a chance to push their enormous talents in a direction that does not depend on safety, but on pinpoint delivery.
With one off guest stars in this 14th season, including the supremely funny Margaret Cabourn-Smith, the impressive Angela McHale, and Matthew Kelly all giving their most outrageously funny performances, Not Going Out’s stature has added another layer to its already charming repertoire of excellent episodes; however it is perhaps to one of these that the delicate eye for farce is rightly framed.
In Doll, Lee Mack and Daniel Peak’s script is wild, it is impressive, it places a modern fear of the capability of AI into the world of relationships, and the humour and pathos it creates is absolutely perfect. It could have been carried off with such assured belief without the voice of Angela McHale providing the voice for the doll, and the cunning security that both Lee Mack and Sally Bretton have in each other’s work.
With a 15th series already commissioned, and the show heading for its 20th year on television, there is a lot to be said for stripping back the series to its more absurd building blocks, no longer having to think of extended routine with a huge main cast sharing several jokes, the sweetness of the situation, the ludicrous cool of bizarre happenstance is given even greater praise.
Not Going Out remains one of the most inventive British comedies of the 21st Century, unafraid to tip the scale of giddy heights of farce, of underlining pathos with a well-placed joke or pun, it has endeared itself across its time on television with attitude and relentless undertaking of joy; and in its 14th season it remains unimpeachable.
Ian D. Hall