This tale of nightmare neighbours in Glasgow is a joy. Matthew Bell pays homage to Britain’s best-kept sitcom secret
With the sudden death at just 48 of Simon Carlyle in August 2023, the curtain came down on a hitherto unsung sitcom that was finally getting the attention it deserved.
A decade earlier, Two Doors Down – created by Carlyle and writing partner Gregor Sharp – received its first outing as a one-off Hogmanay special. It was a slow-burn success before becoming a Scottish institution (winning RTS and Bafta Scotland awards along the way) and finally earning a deserved promotion from BBC Two to One for its 2022 Christmas special and seventh and final series the following autumn.
Two Doors Down is set in the fictional Latimer Crescent, not the Glasgow tenements beloved of gritty social-realist writers. This is a middle-class estate on the edge of the city, more Abigail’s Party than The Royle Family, let alone the uncompromisingly Glaswegian Rab C Nesbitt. But, unlike some Mike Leigh dramas, it never sneers; even the worst character (yes, you Cathy) has redeeming features.
Carlyle has said that Beth was inspired by his own mother and Ian by his experience of coming out as gay while growing up in Ayr. But you wouldn’t want the monstrous Cathy (Doon Mackichan) – wineglass and vape on the go, interested only in herself and flaunting her next foreign holiday – for a neighbour.
Nor would you choose Christine (Scottish acting legend Elaine C Smith, Rab’s long-suffering wife in Rab C Nesbitt), a hypochondriac pensioner. When she’s not bemoaning her own ailments, she’s relating the latest woe to befall her friend, “Pat over the back”. “She did enjoy a cigarette but had cut down quite considerably towards the end... the amputation had slowed down her rolling speed.”
A couple of times an episode, Christine’s potty mouth is unbuttoned: “What’s next – a dry ski slope on the fucking roof, eh?” she throws at Cathy, who is hosting a tacky hot-tub party. Reminiscing about laying a patio in her own garden, Christine recalls going “back and forwards with slabs in a wheelbarrow like Fred fucking West”.
To its fans, it has been the funniest show on telly of the past decade
The set-up of almost every episode is essentially the same – the neighbours, uninvited, abuse the hospitality of Beth and Eric and outstay their welcome. But it’s the razor-sharp writing and beautifully drawn characters that sustain the show, along with the performances of top-notch comic actors, largely known only in Scotland: Cathy’s ever inappropriate husband, Colin (Jonathan Watson), Ian’s sweet but dopey boyfriend Gordon (Kieran Hodgson), and good neighbours Michelle and Alan (Joy McAvoy and Graeme “Grado” Stevely).
Two Doors Down may have been Britain’s best-kept sitcom secret, but to its fans (and there are no bigger devotees than this writer’s family), it has been the funniest show on telly of the past decade. We love the double-takes of Beth, Eric and Ian, aghast at their neighbours’ behaviour; sweary Christine; a Cathy explosion; and the once- a-series moment when lovely Beth cracks and finally lets rip at the ingrates who have invaded her house.
Last year, the cast reunited for the first time since Carlyle’s funeral at a sold-out Glasgow theatre, where they treated fans to a read-through of two scripts. Remembering the writer, who was known for the filthy jokes and ribald stories he heard as a habitué of Glasgow’s gay bars, Elaine C Smith said: “We reckoned that Simon was really all three women in the show – Cathy was his drag queen persona, Beth was his good person and Christine was who he really was.”
All series of Two Doors Down are on BBC iPlayer
