A sitcom about ramblers? Sorry, walkers? The subject matter hardly creates excitement but then the brilliance of all great sitcoms isn’t necessarily the surroundings but the people that inhabit it and the interactions between them. Fortunately The Great Outdoors, the newest work by writers Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley which started on July 28, manages to get by through its interesting inhabitants.
Mark Heap as Bob in The Great Outdoors
Surely the most appealing aspect is that it stars the excellent Mark Heap, who’s been in just about every decent comedy series of the last 10 years. In The Great Outdoors he takes the role of group leader Bob, a petty individual who likes to stick to his pre-planned routines and assigns conversational topics for each mile. Not surprisingly new recruits drop out left, right and centre.
Heap is by far the funniest thing about The Great Outdoors. Sure it’s another eccentric madman to add to his repertoire (good thing he hasn’t worried about being typecast) and while he's an actor by trade the man has an uncanny ability to turn even the most sensible idea into hilarious gibbering nonsense. The highlight of the first episode was Bob’s ingenious idea of exploiting infinite pudding from a badly worded pub menu: “have one pudding get another free, it doesn’t say anything about buying one”, leading to the group being thrown out.
Also on superb form is Steve Edge (who was criminally underused in Phoenix Nights) as dim but loyal walking group member Tom. It’s a shame that The Great Outdoors suffers from a bit of bad timing as his character bears more than a passing resemblance to Colin from Rev. (which, by the way, has really developed into a respectable series), especially when he takes a kick up the backside order a little too literally.
Ruth Jones in new BBC Comedy
To the mainstream audiences who need everything spoon-fed to them the draw will be Gavin & Stacey’s Ruth Jones as new member of the group Christine, who annoys Bob no end by constantly rambling on about the Barnstable walkers and her flashy equipment. Jones is fine but does become genuinely irritating as time progresses. As a further cross over, Katherine Parkinson (from The IT Crowd) makes a less impressive appearance. Much like The IT Crowd's latest series.
As it’s on BBC Four the level of humour is a touch high brow but not above gags about keeping fertile sperm in freezers, teenage lust or a smidgen of swearing, although the stronger language was uttered largely by secondary characters for some bizarre reason.
Some of the jokes do fall flat, like what is really funny about having four candle shops in Bath? Fork handle shops on the other hand...and there goes an unnecessary Two Ronnies reference that is not only irrelevant but not funny in itself. Then again the randomness of three guys playing a charity tennis game dressed in rhino suits but as they only had two their mate has to be a womble does somehow work, as shown on this.
The Great Outdoors written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley
Throughout their partnership, the creators Cecil and Riley have written for the best in TV comedy (Black Books, The Armando Iannucci Shows), the not so good (Hyperdrive) and the bloody awful (So Graham Norton, Little Britain). At the moment this sits somewhere in middle, neither an obvious smash nor a crushing disappointment from a talented duo.
It's been given a three episode series that is perhaps a means of testing the waters before a longer run can be commissioned, like how The Thick of It got started out. While not having the appearance of an instant hit that will transfer to BBC Two at a later stage, The Great Outdoors still has enough to prove if it has enough legs to continue. At this early stage it’s hard to say if it will be back for more after this brief outing.
The Great Outdoors is on BBC Four, Thursday at 9pm.
Steven Cookson - Steven Cookson is a writer and attempted journalist based in Howden. Originally from Chester, that Hollyoaks place in North-West of ...
