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.
Lee is encouraged to share his thoughts with a therapist, who is not impressed with his 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.
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.
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?
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.
Lee is persuaded by Lucy to pretend to be gay in order for her to get closer to Guy, a new business acquaintance. Lee agrees, but only because his reward for doing so is tickets to Wembley, but doesn't find it easy to keep his blokeish insticts hidden. His deception is soon uncovered and he is taken to a 'specialist' club to test his alleged sexuality.
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. Tim thinks he's finally met the perfect girl, but then he finds out what she does for a living.
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'
After some detective work, he concludes Guy must be a gangster. Barbara and Tim suspect Lee objects to Guy for a reason other than his dubious business interests.
Lucy is moved to tears when she reads the essay and had no idea that Lee was so sensitive. Tim, however, is more sceptical and with good reason, because 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.
Tim likes a few games of charades while Lee likes a party with no competitors for Lucy's attention. So when Lucy turns up at the party arm-in-arm with another man, Lee makes it his mission to get rid of him without causing a scene, obviously.
Lucy begs Lee and Tim to get her new neighbour to stop making so much noise, but neither is man enough. Tim takes the tag of 'wimp' to heart and rushes off to join a boxing gym while Lee, in an attempt to impress Lucy, makes the mistake of confronting the man in his own flat, where he finds a creepy psychopath with the eyes of a cold killer.
Lee sees an opportunity to impress her and offers his services but at the expense of Tim, who also thinks he's the best man for the job. What starts off as a small job now turns into a competition between Tim and Lee to not only 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. Lee 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.
Lucy and Tim's parents, Geoffrey and Wendy, are separating. Geoffrey moves into Lucy's flat, banishing Lee to the sofa. To get his room back and avoid being thrown onto the street, Lee must now play Relate Counsellor to patch up the marriage.
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?
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 wasn't expecting.
In an attempt to secure a lucrative work contract Lucy goes for dinner at a client's house but on her way home accidentally drives over his daughter's beloved pet rabbit. Panicking, in case she loses the job, she inveigles Lee into her hair-brained scheme to get herself off the hook.
When Lucy enrols at Night School on a training course in counselling, Lee takes advantage of her new-found skill to help patch things up with his father. But the joint therapy sessions throw up more questions than answers.
After some dubious advice from Daisy, Lee decides that the best way to get Lucy to notice him is to make her jealous, and the best way to make her jealous is to get himself a girlfriend. Now all he has to do is choose the right girl.
The return from Africa of Lucy's first teenage love proves too much for Lee, especially when it turns out that Scott has written a play for Lucy and wants her to star in an Amateur production of it. Can Lee prevent them from getting too close?
When Lucy's god-daughter is suddenly dumped on her twenty-four hours before the girl's birthday party, it is left up to Lee to decide on an appropriate entertainment for fourteen nine-year olds.
Lee's father, Frank, buys himself a boat after a big win on the horses and invites Lee down for a long weekend with Lucy and Daisy. Despite the fact that Lucy is terrified of water, Lee persuades her to come along in the hope that he can manipulate her into sharing a double bed.
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.
The will-they-won't-they tension between Lee and Lucy reaches new highs in this epic series finale for Christmas, as the couple find themselves in previously uncharted emotional water.
Viewers last saw Lee and Lucy as a newlywed couple just having their first baby. Fast-forward seven years and baby Charlie now has five year-old twin siblings, Benji and Molly.
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.
The tensions of sharing a weekend cottage with friends are much in evidence as Lee and Lucy spend three nights in the New Forest with Toby and Anna. The beautiful countryside is forgotten as they squabble over who has the better bedroom, where they should go on their day trips, who should do the cooking, and who should stay behind on the last day to tidy up the cottage.
The tensions of sharing a weekend cottage with friends are much in evidence as Lee and Lucy spend three nights in the New Forest with Toby and Anna. The beautiful countryside is forgotten as they squabble over who has the better bedroom, where they should go on their day trips, who should do the cooking, and who should stay behind on the last day to tidy up the cottage.
When Charlie’s school gets a bad Ofsted rating, Lee and Lucy start looking around for alternative schools. Despite Frank's protests, Geoffrey and Wendy offer to pay to send Charlie to a private school, which presents Lee and Lucy with a moral dilemma.
Lee interrupts Lucy’s favourite television programme by plonking himself down next to her on the sofa, eating her chocolates and talking loudly all the way through the dialogue. When he suddenly finds he can’t remember the name of the leading actor and his hypochondria tells him he is losing his memory, Lucy's evening is ruined.
Unable to convince Lucy that he didn’t smash her precious antique vase an heirloom that belonged to her grandmother Lee summons the family to a meeting to flush out the culprit.
Lucy takes the kids to her parents while Lee oversees the building work in their kitchen. Unfortunately, the builder Lee has employed has a very 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.
On Christmas Eve, Lee and Lucy regret leaving their Christmas shopping to the last minute when Lucy’s wallet and mobile phone are stolen from a department store. Lee wants revenge, and in pursuit of the thief they are led further and further away from home, into the depths of the countryside, from which there is no return.
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 his engagement, Lee cannot believe that any woman would want to marry him and sets out to find out exactly what is 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?
It's been over a year since Frank's passing and the always lovely Wendy, rediscovering a long lost love for painting, decides to create a very unique tribute in oils. How can Lee and Lucy break the news that they don't necessarily like the likeness? The usually curmudgeonly Geoffrey seems very keen on the painting, but is all as it seems and might there be an even more eye-popping piece to emerge from his wife's creative awakening. Could it get any more awkward?
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 is 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 with the new head teacher, Miss Anstis. Now all he has to do is think of an excuse to justify Mollie's absence. 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’s Lucy's birthday. To celebrate, Geoffrey and Wendy take Lee, Lucy, Toby and Anna for a trip on a vintage steam train. But Lee's decision to play Poirot when a stranger turns up unannounced in their carriage risks Lucy’s special day being 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 other parents want to avoid. Undaunted by the disapproval of Toby, who coaches the team, Lee sets about rigging the vote for the player of the year.
Lee makes a big effort to create the perfect Christmas for his family by agreeing to Lucy's wish to do something charitable for once. They invite a lonely old pensioner from the nearby care home to join them for Christmas dinner, only to discover that Wilfred is not allowed to drink alcohol.
Serious
Death
Aussie
Stress
Kid
Caretaker
Mortgage
Gay
Librarian
Baby
Art
Dating
Gangster
Murder at Christmas
Pregnant
Winner
Amy
Party
Neighbour
Speech
Marriage
Absent Father Christmas
Drugs
Debbie
Romance