"Not Going Out" Series 12 Review - How Many Returns of the Mack is Enough?

The longest running sitcom currently on air, Not Going Out follows Lee (Lee Mack, who writes the show) from being a hapless lay-about with a crush on his flatmate Lucy (Sally Bretton), to them being married with three kids. Of course, varying antics occur from being lost at sea, being locked in a psychopath’s escape room, or helping a stranger give birth on a cable car. Although, the situations that define the show have become increasingly bland and unoriginal. Whether, this is due to Covid, lost cast members, or plainly running out of ideas is unclear. What is clear is that the comedy programme isn’t comedic anymore.

In the 16 years and 86 episodes of the show, series 12 is the most uninventive yet. It feels as if Lee Mack’s writing ideas all happen as he is lounging at home watching repeats of old sitcoms before saying “Hey, let’s do one where Lee’s mother-in-law paints a bad looking painting, but everyone has to pretend it looks good” or “Hey, let’s do one where Lee sends a text being mean about their friend Anna, but he accidentally sends it to Anna” or “Hey, let’s just remake Hitchcock’s Rear Window with a cat”.

That’s not to say that old ideas are bad ideas, if the humour adds an interesting take. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The 30-minute tiresome wade through poor attempts at being funny feels like listening to your drunk Uncle rant at Christmas. Any slight “Ha” you might make is purely out of pity and as your standards have been set so low anyway, a joke that feels like it was written by an adult compared to a nine-year old feels revolutionary.

This mainly comes from the characters being stale. This is not to say that the characters need to change, where would ‘Only Fools and Horses’, or ‘The Inbetweeners’, or ‘The IT Crowd’ be if their main characters had their personalities altered. Although, in the case of Not Going Out, the cast seem to be playing the characters based solely on the one or two traits they were given. Anna is still just the upper-class rude friend from Series 7, Wendy is still just the naïve mother-in-law from Series 2, and Lee is still a selfish and pretentious sociopath from Series 1, despite now being a husband and father.

What is clearer is who is absent. There is the obvious exception of Bobby Ball as Frank, who sadly passed away in 2020 after filming of Series 11. Although Hugh Dennis as Toby and two of Lee’s three kids only make an appearance in the last episode whilst even Sally Breton as Lucy, the other main character aside from Lee, is absent from the “Jury” episode, the only one she hasn’t been in since joining the cast in Season 2, Episode 1 back in 2007. This makes the show rely too heavily on Lee as the only main character, a character who isn’t relatable, endearing or at this point vaguely funny in the slightest.

Not Going Out, and as an extension Lee Mack himself, is truly beginning to show its age. Maybe this life story of a man growing up needs to realise that it may be time to look for retirement, despite the fact Series 13 has already been renewed to reach the 100-episode status.