The Great Outdoors

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).

Feature: The Great Outdoors

A new comedy about rambling starts tonight on BBC Four, following the (mis)adventures of an oddball group of walkers as they tackle a different route each episode. So what inspired the series, and what will real ramblers make of it? Walk caught up with series creators Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil to find out...

The Great Outdoors: Can rambling ever be cool?

We wanted it to feel as real as possible so we interviewed anyone we could find in a pair of stout boots.

Kevin Cecil on pitching a show about walking

"So there are these characters and they are all in a walking club."

The Great Outdoors filmed in Chilterns

A 'long-time ambition' for a sitcom set in Buckinghamshire has finally come true for a pair of Aylesbury writers.