Not Going Out - Episode Guide

Lee tries to find his serious side by going on a date with an author, while Kate attempts to discover her lighter side at clown school. Kate's ex-boyfriend Tim tries to patch things up with her by finally apologising for his misdemeanors.

Tim's grandmother dies, bringing him and Kate closer together, much to Lee's concern. He's encouraged to share his thoughts with a therapist, who is not impressed with Lee's inability to have a proper conversation. To add to this there is inappropriate behaviour at the funeral, a furious elderly relative and Tim's new tipple of choice is becoming addictive.

Ruth, an Australian friend of Kate's, comes to stay and Lee is persuaded to pretend to be Tim. Lee gets a job handing out leaflets at a shopping centre, but soon falls foul of a local youth.

Lee finds himself increasingly stressed out having volunteered to teach Kate to drive. Following Kate's advice, he decides to try yoga - but his technique leaves a lot to be desired. A trip to a local acupuncturist is no more successful, so he resorts to more extreme measures. Meanwhile a drive in the countryside has a dramatic and disastrous conclusion.

Kate and Lee are forced to take in a lodger –a surly 14-year-old boy Nicky. Lee's attempts to bond with the teenager prove less than successful, while Tim and Nicky discover they have quite a lot in common. Meanwhile, Kate tries to persuade a carnivorous Great Dane to become a vegetarian with unfortunate results.

Lee finally manages to get a job, as a caretaker. But taking up the new post involves moving out of the flat. Kate interviews potential new flatmates including Pete, and Tim sees an opportunity to get back together with Kate. Lee's new boss proves to be a hard taskmaster. So, will Lee stick at the job or throw in the towel and move back in with Kate?

Lee's former flatmate Kate has moved back to America, so Tim decides to sell the flat. Faced with homelessness, Lee announces he'll buy the flat himself and sets to work putting off any other prospective buyers, including Tim's sister Lucy. Things get worse when Lucy puts in an offer on the flat and Tim is forced to decide where his loyalties lie.

Tim is worried that he isn't manly enough. Lee is persuaded by Lucy to pretend to be gay in order for her to get closer to a new business acquaintance. Lee discovers there's something in it for him, but doesn't find it easy to keep his blokeish insticts hidden.

Lee is becoming increasingly riled by Guy's constant presence in the flat, and his distrust of him is fuelled by the discovery that he runs a lap-dancing club.

Meanwhile. Tim finally seems to have found a girl who he really likes, and of whom Lucy approves. The perfect girl... until Tim finds out what she does for a living.

Lucy is worried about the age gap between her and Guy, a concern that increases when Guy turns up to meet her with his grandson in tow. A family emergency means Lee and Tim are left in charge of the baby, and they prove to be less than perfect babysitters.

In an effort to appear as intellectual as Lucy's friends, Lee shows off his 'knowledge' of the art world, holding forth on the subject of an unknown artist who his cleaner Barbara has told him is the next big thing. When Lucy takes his advice and invests a fortune in the artist's work, Lee is left trying to prevent her from finding out the artist is actually a nobody.

As Lucy and Guy's relationship intensifies, Lee starts to ponder his lack of a girlfriend and, encouraged by Barbara, tries speed dating. Tim is forced to go on a disastrous date with Barbara in order to prove that he sees her as more than 'the help'.

When Guy showers Lucy with expensive clothes prior to whisking her off for a mystery weekend away, Lee becomes suspicious of Guy. After some high-level surveillance, he comes to the conclusion that Guy is gangster.

But Barbara and Tim realise that he is not objecting to Guy just because of his dubious business interests, but also because Lee wants Lucy for himself.

Lee's plan to spend time alone with Lucy at Christmas is threatened by the presence of Tim, Daisy, Tim and Lucy's parents, and even Barbara doing the cooking. All seems to be going well until a murder mystery game brings family tensions to a head.

When Lucy announces that she is pregnant, Lee wonders if the father might accidentally be him. He can't bring himself to tell Lucy how he thinks it might have happened, but Tim guesses. He is outraged at the thought of his friend and his sister together, but Lee has already started to warm to the idea of being a dad.

Lee is insufferably smug when he wins a thousand pounds in a writing competition with an essay entitled Disability in the Workplace.

Lucy is moved to tears when she reads the essay - she had no idea that Lee was so sensitive. Tim, however, is more sceptical, and with good reason; when a journalist turns up to interview the winner, she is expecting to meet a disabled author.

Over-excited by the appearance of a lesbian couple in their building, Lee and Tim ask them over for dinner, little realising that their adolescent attempt to get their jollies will backfire when Lucy discovers a side to herself that she never knew existed.

When Tim and Lee try to organise a party for Lucy's 30th birthday, their ideas of what makes a good party differ widely; Tim likes a few games of charades, while Lee likes a do where there are no competitors for Lucy's attention.

So when she arrives at the party arm-in-arm with another man, Lee makes it his mission to somehow get rid of him without causing a scene.

A new neighbour moves in upstairs, and his constant noise drives Lucy to distraction. She begs Lee and Tim to get him to stop, but neither is man enough.

Tim takes being branded a coward to heart, and rushes off to join a boxing gym. Lee, meanwhile, tries to impress Lucy by confronting the man in his own flat, where he finds himself staring into the eyes of a cold killer.

Lucy is stressed, as she has to make an important speech at a recruitment conference, and has nobody to help her write it. Sensing an opportunity to impress her, Lee offers his services, which upsets Tim, who also thinks he is the best man for the job.

What started off as a small job soon turns into a competition between Tim and Lee not only to see who can come up with the wittiest lines, but also to establish which of them Lucy likes best.

Lee is horrified when he hears that Lucy is considering marriage to Pavlov, a mechanic from the old Eastern bloc, just so that he can stay in the country. But he is a lone voice in trying to stop it, because one by one, as Lucy's family and friends hear Pavlov's tragic tales of life back home, they are persuaded that he is a perfect match for Lucy.

Lee's father turns up at the flat unannounced. This is the man who walked out of the family home when Lee was four, never paid his maintenance and ate Lee's goldfish. Lee wants him out of the flat, but Lucy tells him that the only way forward is to forgive and forget. Unfortunately, Lee's dad's behaviour makes this virtually impossible for Lee to achieve.

After a night spent out clubbing, Tim returns to the flat wearing the wrong coat, and convinces Lee to help him return it to its owner.

Lee's past catches up with him when a young woman appears on his doorstep and asks for a cup of sugar.

Lee promises to stop treating Lucy's flat as if he owns it - but not before he has hired it out to a film director.

Lucy and Tim are distraught. Their parents' thirty-year marriage is at an end, and their father has moved out of the family home... And into Lee's bedroom.

When an old lady wanders into Lucy's flat and makes herself at home on the sofa, Lee doesn't know what to do with her.

Lee dreams of a perfect life with Lucy, but can the reality ever match up?

When Tim joins a band at work and Lucy falls for the lead guitarist, Lee becomes jealous, and decides that if he cannot beat them he should join them.

Lee's lazy weekend is wrecked when his scrounging father turns up unexpectedly. Having just come out of hospital, he needs somewhere to stay for the weekend. Will Lee take on the demanding role of carer?

In a desperate bid to prove his manliness, Lee joins Tim, Daisy and Lucy on a camping weekend in the middle of a dark, spooky forest.

To impress Lucy, Lee starts training for a 10 kilometre fun run, only to injure himself immediately. In an effort to hide the injury from Lucy, he gets himself a secret sports massage, but this just leads to more trouble.

Lucy finds herself working on a government initiative encouraging men to regularly check themselves for lumps. Eager to please Lucy, Lee follows the campaign's advice and discovers something he was not expecting.

After Lucy suffers a mild indiscretion whilst drunk and claims to have no memory of the event, she and Lee embark on an experiment with a bottle of home-made potato hooch to prove once and for all that you can remember what happens when you are mashed.

When Lucy accidentally runs over a pet rabbit belonging to the daughter of an important client, she needs Lee and Daisy to help cover her tracks.

On a skiing trip to Eastern Europe, Lee, Lucy and Daisy get stuck in a cable car.

Lee takes advantage of Lucy's new-found skills as a relationship counsellor to patch things up with his father.

Lee does what he has to do to stop Lucy from flirting with the male delegates at a three-day annual trade conference in order to get herself work.

Lee decides that the best way to get Lucy to notice him is to make her jealous. Now all he has to do is find himself a girlfriend.

When Lucy's first love reappears on the scene and wants Lucy to star in a romantic play that he has written especially for her, Lee is forced to fight for her attention.

When Lucy's god-daughter is suddenly dumped on her the night before the girl's birthday party, Lucy and Lee have to come up with an appropriate entertainment for fourteen nine-year-olds.

Lee spends a long weekend on his dad's new boat with Lucy, even though she is terrified of water.

In an effort to create the perfect Christmas for Lucy, Lee invites her parents to join the two of them and Daisy in a snug old house in the country which used to belong to his dear dead aunt. But the Christmas spirit is in short supply when Lucy discovers that the house has not been lived in for years and there appears to be a spooky presence.

When Lucy has her handbag stolen from right under Lee's nose, he feels the need to prove his manliness over and over and over again.

Lee's big mouth has got him and Lucy invited to a christening party thrown by new neighbours Toby and Anna, and now they have no time to find the perfect present for the baby who has everything.

When Lucy decides it is time to have a baby, she is surprised to find the whole family taking a personal interest in the conception.

Lucy aspires to be friends with her posh new neighbours Toby and Anna, but she hasn't reckoned on Lee dragging her back down to earth.

In an attempt to impress Lucy with his intellectual prowess, Lee joins Daisy as a contestant on the TV quiz show Pointless.

Frank's drinking becomes a problem and forces Lee and Lucy to reassess the living arrangements in the flat.

No matter what happens, Lucy's surprise party for her parents' anniversary must remain a secret or it won't be a surprise. So why she tells Lee about it is anyone's guess.

Flying off on a summer holiday, Lucy and Daisy endure the worst flight of their lives when Lee gets a bad case of the jitters on the plane.

Lee spends time in the bar with Toby worrying that the woman of his dreams is drifting further away.

The will-they-won't-they tension reaches new highs in this epic series finale for Christmas that sees Lucy and Lee in previously uncharted emotional waters.

One year on, a heavily pregnant Lucy is three days overdue with their first baby when they find themselves mistakenly caught up in a robbery at the local department store along with Lee's dad Frank dressed asSanta's elf, uber-ditzy friend Daisy, and neighbours Toby and Anna.

Locked in and faced with a dangerous robber wearing a Father Christmas latex mask, they need to come up with an escape plan before things take a turn for the worse.

After seven years of marriage, Lee and Lucy disagree about the best way to keep the romance alive.

Lucy causes offence by choosing the wrong babysitter.

Lee's hopes for a stress-free ferry trip to France with Lucy and the children are dashed when they don't leave enough time for the car journey.

Lee and Lucy play hot tub fantasy date with Anna and Toby, causing them to end up in hot water.

Lee is worried that Charlie is getting a reputation at school for being the class clown.

How will Lee and Lucy's marriage fare after marriage counselling?

Are Lee and Lucy ready for another child?

It's Christmas Eve, and Lee and Lucy face a possible yuletide disaster when they discover the perfect present they have bought for their children has already been gifted to them by their grandparents.

Lucy's father reluctantly allows Lee to help Lucy clear up the builder's mess in their new kitchen extension.

As a surprise for Lee's Birthday Lucy invites the whole family to join them in an Escape Room.

A missing toy keyring causes a rift between Lee and Lucy and best friends, Toby and Anna.

To teach the children to be more responsible Lee and Lucy get a family pet.

When Lee and Lucy cancel dinner with Toby and Anna at the last moment it opens up a can of worms.

Lee and Lucy object to the school lollipop man handing out lollipops to the kids.

Encouraged by Anna, Lucy considers whether a breast augmentation is for her.

With no room for slip ups or mistakes (no pressure then) we join Lee and Lucy live from their festively decorated living room, nervously discussing the Ding Dong Merrily on Live Christmas Spectacular - the Christmas variety show they've been strong-armed into organising to raise money for their children's school. But things are rarely plain sailing for our duo, as they soon come to realise, with an animal impersonator as the only confirmed performer, quality acts are worryingly thin on the ground. Who will Lee and Lucy turn to? Surely Toby and uptight wife Anna can't be roped in? With raw egg juggling and some knife throwing (CUT!) for good measure... what could possibly go wrong?

Toby organises a sponsored parachute jump to raise money for a Children's Ward in his hospital. Supportively, Lee, Lucy, Anna and the grandparents all agree to take part, but once airborne will everyone pluck up the courage to jump?

Can Lee and Lucy's friendship with Toby and Anna survive a long weekend in a damp cottage in the New Forest?

Lee is outraged that the twins have started sex education at school and resolves to teach them everything he knows about the facts of life before Miss Anstis corrupts them.

When Charlie's school gets a bad Ofsted rating, Geoffrey and Wendy offer to pay to send Charlie to Private School, which presents Lee and Lucy with a moral dilemma.

Lee decides to gatecrash Lucy's favourite television programme and watch it with her. Lucy is not best pleased, especially when Lee can't remember the name of the leading actor.

Unable to convince Lucy that he didn't smash Lucy's precious heirloom, a blue and white antique vase that belonged to her grandmother, Lee summons the family to a meeting to flush out the culprit.

Lucy takes the kids away to her parents while Lee stays in the house to oversee the building work in their kitchen. Unfortunately, the builder Lee has employed to do the job has an annoyingly relaxed attitude to deadlines.

It's Halloween and Lee and Lucy take the children out trick or treating. Lee accidentally drops his phone in the porch of a spooky Victorian house and makes the mistake of going back to retrieve it. Once there, he discovers that the house is full of secrets that would be far better left undisturbed.

Lee and Lucy pop out on a last-minute Christmas Eve mission, leaving their youngsters in the apparently capable hands of Geoffrey - cutting more of a strict and stuffy Victorian gent than usual - and wife Wendy. Alas, things don't quite go to plan for the outward-bound duo, as a theft and unexpected trip into deep countryside await. Not only that, but there are encounters with an aggressive bull in a field and a terrifying truck driver to endure. Meanwhile, back at home, Lee's lovably feckless father Frank turns up to offer gifts - in his own inimitably festive way. Lee Mack, Sally Bretton and Bobby Ball star.

With 40 minutes to go until midnight, a New Year's Eve party at Lee and Lucy's house turns sour when family members start making their resolutions.

Social niceties are stretched to snapping point when Lee and Lucy take in a package for their neighbour and inadvertently discover that it contains an embarrassing object that Lee now has to return. That proves to be easier said than done.

To celebrate their anniversary, Lee and Lucy plan a friendly night of quizzing with Toby and Anna in their local pub, but the evening is derailed when neither couple can bear to lose to their partners and the foursome splits into rival teams.

When Lee's feckless dad, Frank, announces that he's engaged to be married, Lee cannot believe that any woman would want to marry him. There must be something wrong with her. Lucy invites Frank and Carol to dinner to allay Lee's fears. Carol turns out to be perfect, but now Lee is even more nervous. Frank seems to dote on her. If Carol dumps Frank, Frank will be devastated. Then it will be Lee's shoulder that Frank will cry on, and Lee cannot cope with that. In an effort to find out what Carol is up to, Lee joins Frank's dating app and puts himself forward as a potential date for Carol. If she bites, he will know she's up to no good.

When Lee joins Facebook for the first time and is contacted by an ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago, Lucy is annoyed that she cares so much. Her feelings are complicated by the sudden reappearance of a friend from university, with whom she had a brief relationship. Threatened by fond memories from the past, Lee and Lucy start behaving badly.

The family visit to the war graves in Normandy gets off to a bad start, and Lucy discovers that her grandfather, Wendy's father, was not the man she thought he was.

A family Christmas party turns sour when Lucy announces that she has got tickets to see Jason Donovan in panto. Lee loathes panto, especially given Jason Donovan was Lucy's teenage crush. That night, while Lee and Lucy turn their backs on each other in bed, Lee has an unsettling dream in which he is dressed as Buttons and his whole life has turned into a pantomime. Lucy is Cinderella, Toby and Anna are the Ugly Sisters, Geoffrey is Baron Hardup, and Wendy is the Fairy Godmother - and Prince Charming, the handsome suitor who pursues Cinderella and asks for her hand in marriage, is played by Jason Donovan. Can Buttons keep the fairy-tale couple apart?

Wendy paints a portrait of Lee's late father, Frank, and gives it to Lee and Lucy as a present. She is expecting them to love it, but that would require the painting to be not just competent but good. Once it's hanging on their wall, Lee and Lucy must contrive to lose the painting without Wendy or Geoffrey noticing.

When Lee accidentally sends a rude text about Anna to Lucy, he makes the stupid mistake of sending it to Anna herself. Lee and Lucy now face the impossible task of stealing Anna's phone and deleting the text before she reads it.

Lee makes no effort to talk to other parents in the playground, and Lucy is worried that he is becoming isolated and friendless. She fires him up to go into school and make some new friends. Reluctantly Lee gives it a try. He opens up with strangers and makes friends with another lone male, Keith. But Keith is even less sociable than Lee.

Confined to a wheelchair, his right leg encased in plaster after knee surgery, Lee has too much time on his hands, which he uses to watch the world go by through a pair of high-powered binoculars. He soon realises that all is not well in his neighbour's house opposite. In fact, he's quickly convinced that something despicable is going on.

Lee does jury service and joins eleven other jurors to debate whether the accused is guilty or not. A simple enough task - until Lee decides to put the other jurors on trial.

Lee organises a family camping trip in an attempt to bring the generations together. But even though he has remembered to bring his guitar for campfire sing-songs, he's forgotten to check the weather. And when Lucy finds something in the woods that looks very much like a human bone, the unhappy campers cannot wait to leave.

When Lee and Lucy are asked to cover for Anna on more than one occasion, so that she can go out at night and have secret Italian lessons, they suspect the worst – that she is having an affair. Lee decides that it is up to him to tell Toby that his marriage is in jeopardy and sets about finding the evidence.

Lee's lifestyle catches up on him and he is forced to wait on a hospital ward for routine surgery on his gallbladder until his blood pressure comes down. But visits from the parents-in-law and Anna and Toby, who arrive to ask him a question he doesn't want to hear, ensure that his stress levels remain dangerously high.

To take advantage of three free tickets to Adventure Canyon Theme Park Lee takes Mollie out of school for a day and gets into trouble from the new head teacher, Miss Anstis. Now all he has to do is think of an excuse to justify Mollie's absence and what could be simpler than a trip to the dentist?

Lee wakes up inside a coffin and can't remember how he got there, until a phone call from Lucy reminds him what he'd been doing that afternoon. Now all he needs to do is keep Lucy in the dark as to his exact location and work out how to escape.

It is Lucy's birthday. To celebrate, Geoffrey and Wendy take Lee, Lucy, Toby and Anna for a trip on a vintage steam train. But Lee decides to play Poirot when a stranger turns up unannounced in their carriage and Lucy's special day is ruined.

Lucy has cooked a special meal so that she and Lee can spend an evening in without distractions, talking about the state of their marriage. But Lee is obsessed with a beeping noise in the house that he can't find and the food is soon forgotten.

When Lee goes to watch Benji playing football for a local Under 13 team, he is unable to restrain himself on the touchline and becomes the competitive dad that all the other parents avoid. Undaunted by the disapproval of Toby, who coaches the team, Lee sets about rigging the vote for the Player of the Year.

Brace for yuletide suburban chaos courtesy of Lee and Lucy as Lee throws everything at creating the perfect family Christmas, agreeing to Lucy's wishes to do something charitable and having "a normal Christmas where nothing goes wrong." This moment of festive spirit sees the couple invite Wilfred, a lonely pensioner from the nearby care home, to join them for Christmas dinner. The only instruction is that Wilfred is not, under any circumstances, allowed to drink alcohol…

Given best friends Toby and uptight ice-queen Anna are on hand, as well as Lucy's lovely mum Wendy with curmudgeonly dad Geoffrey, surely Lee can ensure this Christmas runs to plan?

A compilation of outtakes from over the series of the popular situation comedy, featuring all the bits you were never meant to see...