Lee Mack

A welcome return for the panel show hosted by Charlie Brooker that looks for the worst in everything and spins it into comedy gold. For example - your ideas, please, for the most appalling concept album? I'll leave you to insert your own ideas there and introduce the panellists: reliable Lee Mack; rising Scottish comic Susan Calman (a News Quiz regular); and the "who he?", Daniel Maier (answer: a writer on Harry Hill's TV Burp, so no slouch when it comes to gags).

You'll laugh your socks off - and future episodes are also worth catching, with guests including "the Legend" Barry Cryer, Graham Linehan (Father Ted) and Isy Suttie, doleful Dobby from Peep Show.

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.

Ah, Des O'Connor. Indefatigable crooner, Morecambe and Wise foil, chat-show host and borderline national treasure. Who knew he's daft enough to eat cat food by accident? Or is he? Maybe his long, peculiar story about how he dined on this strange dish in a holiday villa is all nonsense.

O'Connor, looking as bronzed as a 70s sideboard, is a game contestant on Lee Mack's team, and quickly gets into the spirit of the show after a giggly start. Meanwhile, on David Mitchell's team, Rhod Gilbert regales us with an account of the acute trauma he suffered at an airport.

And comic actress Sally Phillips (Smack the Pony, Miranda) apparently plays a texting-game with her husband while he's at the swimming baths. Worse, she once rode her uncle's mobility scooter with disastrous consequences. Perhaps. It's a great show, and what Friday nights are for.

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.

Lee Mack is all over BBC1's Friday night line-up tonight.

As well as his regular stint as team captain on Would I Lie To You?, he's also rubbing shoulders with Zac Efron and Matt Le Blanc on The Graham Norton Show for anyone who just can't get enough of him.

Here, his sitcom almost lives up to the promise of its title as Lee, Tim, Daisy and Lucy attempt to go on a camping trip but don't actually get out of the car.

Lee is trying to prove that he's more of a real man than Tim.

It's a contest which hardly seems worth taking part in, but perhaps that's why he's gallantly allocated the lion's share of one-liners to dim Daisy (played by Katy Wix) and is content to take more of a back seat.

Literally, in this case.

There's a sad story from Richard Bacon: when he worked in McDonald's his girlfriend joined the queue for his till and dumped him when she reached the counter.

Of course, it could be complete tosh and the fun lies in the inquisition. As Bacon is on David Mitchell's team that means he's extensively quizzed by Lee Mack, backed by Clare Balding and a giggly Miranda Hart. And Balding is entertainingly cruel when Bacon reels off some facts about the cooking times of burgers.

Also, Dale Winton reveals how, as a child, instead of a comfort blanket or a teddy bear, he slept with a potato, while Hart insists she was a judge at the Identical Twins of the Year Award.

The best lines tonight go to smashing Katy Wix as Daisy, Tim's remorselessly stupid girlfriend. Daisy is a woolly-hatted thumb-head, a dim pixie, a clot. She thinks camping is sexist because of its terminology: "One-man tent, guy rope" and eczema is a National Park.

Daisy is at her most wide-eyed when the Not Going Out quartet head to the woods for a night spent in tents under the stars. Disaster quickly looms when Tim's car breaks down and Lee (Lee Mack) decides to behave like a real man to impress his adored Lucy. But there's something nasty in the woods and no one feels brave. It's all very silly, but you will laugh, despite yourself.

Bobby Ball returns tonight to stir up more trouble as Lee's dad. This time he's in a wheelchair, covered head to toe with plaster, and in possession of some pain relief that can only be administered where the sun don't shine. That's the source of some obvious gags, but Lee Mack and Tim Vine play out the farce with their usual, splendid verve.