Lee Mack interview

TV Choice met Lee Mack to chat about the new series and life after Tim Vine...

Lee Mack reveals Not Going Out has different endings

Fans of the BBC One comedy Not Going Out may finally see the friendship between landlady, Lucy, and her flatmate develop into romance.

Mack, who plays unemployed lodger, Lee, has revealed that two versions of the final episode have been filmed.

Lee Mack: I'd love to do Not Going Out movie and tour

Hit BBC sitcom Not Going Out soon will go out for live dates - if star Lee Mack gets his way. Lee, who co-writes the series, wants to take the show on tour - and give it the movie treatment.

A hungover Lee wakes up in bed with Lucy: "I take it you're naked as well?" she cries, horrified. "Well, I kept me socks on," he replies, "I've got some dignity." Yes, after several series of quip-tastic lusting after his flatmate, it looks as if Lee has finally got further than a kiss under the mistletoe. Good news? No - they're both in a state because they can't remember a thing, thanks to all the home-made potato hooch they drank. And they're desperate that Lucy's brother Tim shouldn't find out. From there we get a typically likeable, gag-rich storyline, helped along by the presence of peerless sitcom-senior Geoffrey Whitehead as Lucy's dad. Yes - her parents get involved.

Not Going Out: an appreciation

As Not Going Out series 5 draws to a close, Simon salutes a quietly brilliant sitcom...

There's no point looking to Not Going Out for bold surprises or multi-layered comic finesse. What it delivers are sharp, uncomplicated laughs, laced with a good-natured smuttiness perfect for Friday nights.

And the key words in that sentence are "it delivers". If you don't like one gag, there'll be another along momentarily, probably also revolving around misunderstandings or double meanings. Hence tonight, Lee (Lee Mack) is concerned about his nether regions, and Lucy is keen for him to examine himself properly. "Do you ever check yourself, er... downstairs?" she enquires daintily, to which Lee replies, "Yeah - until the woman downstairs tells me to get out."

It is, Lee explains "not the bratwurst but the brussels sprouts" that are causing concern, which leads to a lovely series of scenes with friend Tim as they try to establish the size sprouts should in fact be.

Prepare to be buried in a torrent of smut when Lee takes up Lucy's challenge to join a fun run. It sounds an unlikely source for a welter of mucky gags, but when Lee (Lee Mack) pulls a muscle during a half-hearted attempt at training, and when he hires a Polish masseuse to help, only he doesn't realise she's that kind of masseuse, we are pitched into Carry On type misunderstandings.

Before we know it, Lee and Tim have been arrested for kerb-crawling and end up in a brothel. Of course it doesn't matter that they are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing; it can't stop a flow of jokes that would make Roy Chubby Brown reach for a lace handkerchief.

Tonight's episode climaxes (if that's the right word) with Tim Vine and Lee Mack in bed with a Polish sex worker - the culmination of a very shaggy dog story indeed. As Vine sighs, this is what comes of being a friend of Mack, whose sitcom is like a more risqué Men Behaving Badly, with more one-liners. Vine does make one astute observation: "If prostitution's the oldest profession, it must have been the first and only profession. So where was everyone else getting the money to pay for it?"

Lee Mack's sitcom sees his hapless character start training for a fun run tonight and end up becoming embroiled with a prostitute. Its gag-heavy humour isn't to all tastes in this era of observational comedy, and some jokes do fall a bit flat, but most are pretty original - one of tonight's cleverer ones is: "Usain Bolt, I say tomato". The plots are also cleverly constructed, and, above all, Mack and co-star Tim Vine have fantastic comic chemistry. It's a very enjoyable half hour.