If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Not Going Out started promisingly. It was clearly a vehicle for Lee Mack and Tim Vine's one-liner stand-up comedy, but it still managed to be passable.Unfortunately, they squeezed the life out of this particular lemon, and there's really nothing left. Every episode is so formulaic, even the jokes collapse under the strain of the clichés. It's down there with Miranda, and maybe even Mrs Brown's Boys.Essentially, every episode involves Lee trying to impress a girl with some scheme or pretence, and inevitably failing. He's a mostly unemployed Northerner who inexplicably manages to live in a large flat in London (I mean, a flat that would be out of the price-range of anyone earning below £30,000 a year). It's been 8 years of this crap, how long is Lee's life going to revolve around pathetically throwing himself at the only eligible female he knows in utter desperation and failing repeatedly?Basically there is NO imagination in the writing, NO attempt to do anything different. Just cliché-ridden drivel. The best thing about this show is the theme tune. This program has outstayed its welcome and needs to go.

Not Going Out is a rare thing indeed. it is a rare example of a sitcom that has been axed and then brought back again thanks largely to fan protests (and lets face it - a lack of better alternatives). So there must be some good reason for this show lasting as long as it has.It has all the classic elements you'd expect to see in a sitcom. It has a 'will they won't they ' relationship going on, it has lots of witty jokes being thrown around and as with any sitcom set in a flat it has a dopey cleaner.However despite these elements they remain things we've seen done a thousand times better in other shows. It's almost as if the writers are trying to create a show based on everything that's worked before and hope it works again rather than creating something new.

Not Going out is hilarious, the only sit-com that makes me laugh out loud every time I see it. Lee Mack and Time Vine should have been put together years ago.The best scenes are when Lee Mack and Tim Vine are in the pub. They are given a chance to be at their comedy best.I also like Miranda Hart and Sally Bretton, they sometimes have better lines than Lee and Tim.I was in the studio audience for a show in series 3 (yet to be screened at the time of writing.) It's great seeing all the bits that never make it to the screen. You can only see that if you go to a recording. Everybody should go to see a TV show recorded, the tickets are free and it is just as entertaining as the theatre or cinema.

'Not Going Out' is a halfway convincing attempt at a British version of a US wisecracking sitcom like 'Friends' - and yes I know it's not SUPPOSED to be the same - and in spite of the atrocity of a laughter track and the irritating retro music the jokes are amusing enough. Megan Dodds is well cast, and unusually for an American in a UK series (and vice versa) she's convincing and natural. Now, if only they could have got somebody else to deliver the lines of the other two characters. Instead we have two stand-up comics who are too old and too fat and who don't have a clue about acting. And maybe the writers (wasn't this vanity casting?) could arrange to make them a little more sympathetic: wondering which uptight smart*ss is going to get off with which skinny chick will not sustain interest for very long, especially when Lee Mack keeps feeling his grungy teeth with his tongue like that. Ewww! In Friends and similar shows, the physical comedy and banter take account of the actors' physical appearance and played with it; in this, their baldness or ugliness is never mentioned so they come across as narcissistic. The characters have nowhere to develop apart from the 'will they/won't they', so the jokes are going to run out at some point soon. It won't be pretty.