Ruth Jones (I)

A misfit rambling club is the setting for this new three-part comedy and its strong cast bodes well. Heartache, hiking and punch-ups are promised in the series, which opens with Bob (Mark Heap) facing a battle of wills with Christine (Ruth Jones), the newest member of his cherished rambling club. She's been barred from another club and arrives with a GPS and all the latest kit and Bob soon spots a rival. Each week reveals a new crisis.

A three-parter promising "lovely views, stolen kisses, packed lunches and punch-ups": each episode shows us one day trip taken by a group of squabbling ramblers. It should be fertile comedy ground, and the cast is superb: Lark Rise to Candleford's master of elongated suffering, Mark Heap, stars as group leader Bob, with Gavin & Stacey's Ruth Jones playing Christine, a new member just arrived from Barnstaple. If that weren't upsetting enough, she's got a GPS and fancy hiking socks...

This promising new comedy follows the hikes, heartaches, friendships and rivalries of a misfit rambling club. Gavin & Stacey actress Ruth Jones stars opposite Mark Heap, who you may recognise from Lark Rise to Candleford and Spaced.

Part of BBC Four's Outdoor Season, The Great Outdoors has the potential to be one of the comedy hits of the year. Heap and Jones are two of the UK comedy scene's hottest properties and the show's writers, BAFTA award-winning and rambling-loving duo Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley worked together on the hilarious Black Books. Let's hope the show lives up to its promise.

This new comedy boasts a fine cast, including Green Wing's Mark Heap, Gavin & Stacey's Ruth Jones and The IT Crowd's Katherine Parkinson.

There's also some rather nice scenery. The story centres on a rambling club and its peculiar assortment of members, with each episode focusing on one of their excursions.

It's during these that we discover the friendships and rivalries within, most notably the clash between traditionalist Bob (Heap) and newcomer Christine (Jones), the latter's high-tech accessories and fancy gear getting right up the former's nose.

For fellow member Sophie (Parkinson), the outings are a tad less relaxing than she'd envisaged when she and husband Joe (Steve Wight) signed up - but it seems she's considering other ways to unwind...

When I moved up north, I made the mistake of joining a walking club to make new friends. If the company had been as ­entertaining as this, the weather as sunny and the terrain as flat, I might have stuck it out for longer than a month.

This new three-part comedy series stars Mark Heap as Bob, the domineering head of a dwindling group of ramblers in Buckinghamshire. Newcomer Christine (Gavin and Stacey's Ruth Jones) has just joined them from north Devon with an oversized rucksack packed for every eventuality and very outspoken advice about how they used to do things in Barnstaple.

The cast also includes Katherine Parkinson from The IT Crowd and each week will join the group on a different walk. This time Bob is dismayed to discover that his favourite pub has gone gastro and there's an unfortunate incident with a rabbit.

We've got a lot of affection for Mark Heap and Ruth Jones, have a good deal of time for the work of Hyperdrive writers Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley and even like the idea of a comedy about a hapless group of ramblers. Unfortunately we didn't get a preview, so all we really know is that Christine (Ruth Jones) is hyper-efficient and wants to take over leadership of the ramblers from Bob (Mark Heap).

There's a whole clutch of matey comedians, including Rob Brydon and Lee Mack, who seem to do nothing much except appear in various combinations on comedy panel shows like this. Would I Lie to You?, however, an update on Call My Bluff, is the most enjoyable format. David Mitchell and Ruth Jones also appear - their trick seems to be to tell their tall stories with deceptive incompetence, which is why the biggest-seeming lies turn out to be true - except for when they don't.

Ruth Jones interview

Ruth Jones is perhaps best known for starring in and co-creating romantic comedy Gavin & Stacey. Now Ruth turns to the British countryside for laughs in The Great Outdoors, about a misfit group of ramblers.

Difficult question: How do you make James Corden's World Cup Live even worse?

Answer: Get ­England's ragtag team of total losers to remove ­themselves from the tournament. What an empty exercise ITV's shapeless shambles has become now that manic cheerleader Corden can no longer hero worship Stevie G, Lamps and the rest of that rabble.

"Why can't we in Wales support ­England?" asked studio guest Ruth Jones. ­"Because they're out," deadpanned Rob ­Brydon. But fair play to ­jaunty Jim. He saw the ­absurdity of his ­predicament. "I feel like an idiot," he roared. "I've got a World Cup show... I've released a record!" All based on the ­delusional belief that Fabio's feeble flops ever stood a chance.

Corden's a likeable guy with a mouth as big as his waistline. But he doesn't appear to know much about ­football. Before the humiliating German rout, he told C4's Alan Carr: "I genuinely believe we're going to win this match." Perceptive.