Jay Richardson reviews the latest Scottish sitcom to move from screen to stage

Notwithstanding the death of co-creator Simon Carlyle in 2023, and a period of uncertainty about the sitcom’s future, it’s long felt a question of when, not if, Two Doors Down joins the conveyor belt of BBC Scotland comedies adapted for the stage in recent times.

Following the likes of Still Game and Gary: Tank Commander into the 12,000-seater OVO Hydro, these adaptations have a self-conscious air of pantomime about them. Even if this wasn’t acknowledged almost straightaway in (now solo) writer Gregor Sharp’s canny script, every character’s entrance here is greeted with the sort of affectionate whoops once reserved for The Fonz in Happy Days or Kramer in Seinfeld.

Everyone’s excited to see how this pans out, how the cosy comedy transfers to a cavernous arena. On the one hand, Latimer Crescent is a nondescript, Scottish suburban everystreet. Yet it’s also quintessentially Glasgow, with the twinkling night sky of the set’s design incorporating the city’s landmarks, including the Hydro. This glows every more distinct in the background as the evening goes on, collapsing distinctions between the characters and audience, with the venue rubbished in a subplot about a Proclaimers gig taking place there.

‘Like going out to watch the telly,’ sniffs Eric (Alex Norton), cutting straight to the challenge of staging any entertainment in a room this size, though particularly a production as contained as Two Doors Down.

With only a few regular sets, tight main ensemble and stagey crosstalk, the sitcom is practically a theatre piece anyway, a less mannered Abigail’s Party of contemporary class friction with earthier language.

And yet so much of the television show’s humour relies on snappy editing, those subtle glances and pained, belated flickers of understanding as a character realises they’ve been grievously insulted, that this could have been lost to those up in the cheap seats.

Thankfully, the show’s simmering combustibility affords the cast the chance to act ‘bigger’ on occasion. And the live camera crew do an exceptional job of recreating the TV transmission’s reaction shots over three times the sitcom’s normal length. Ultimately, you’re left with the compromise of your eyes periodically darting between the stage and the giant screens on either side. But director James Brining has found ways for the two to complement each other, so it’s never quite the tiring wrench it could have been.

Indeed, although as ever, the overwhelming majority of the ‘action’ take place in Eric and Beth (Arabella Weir)’s living room, with the show remaining true to its claustrophobic sitcomness, it also fulfils the bigger canvas’s demand for song, spectacle and (slightly) more exotic locations in a manner that’s neat, witty and feels organic. Unlike say, the rather soulless and self-indulgent second Still Game live show, which departed too far from mundane Craiglang in its need to justify its own existence.

The setup here is that Beth and Eric have gathered the neighbours so that son Ian (Jamie Quinn) and his boyfriend Gordon (Kieran Hodgson) can share some big news, sending everyone into speculative overdrive, not least the outrageous Cathy (Doon Mackichan) and her ever-prurient-about-homosexuality husband Colin (Jonathan Watson).

But with freeloading hypochondriac Christine (Elaine C Smith) and bland young couple Michelle (Joy McAvoy) and Alan (Graeme ’Grado’ Stevely) also present, another revelation threatens to tear the whole mutually dysfunctional group apart.

More so than the nostalgic, folky anachronism of everyone knowing their neighbours and their most intimate business – which at one point prompts Gordon, the group’s biggest outsider as the mild-mannered and rather wet Englishman to a splenetic meltdown of personal epiphany and a concise summary of home truths about the others – the dialogue is characterised by incessant sniping and micro-aggressions in almost every exchange.

These invariably escalate and become macro from Cathy as her alcohol intake increases, her flashiness and mean-spiritedness only rendered palatable by the flamboyant verve of Mackichan’s performance.

Suffering this grotesque force of chaos, Weir and McAvoy in particular are so generous and deceptively attuned in unenviable roles as the straightest members of the ensemble. At the same time, Grado elevates Alan’s doughy obliviousness and blokeish insensitivity with an understated combination of timing and deadpan.

As the protesting-too-much martyr, Christine is Cathy’s only rival for self-absorption and the best lines, which Smith interjects with a naturalism that’s nevertheless scene-stopping, even if the character’s sudden and atypical unwillingness to mooch is the strongest indication that currently all is not well in the crescent. Colin is as intimidated as everyone by his gorgon wife. Yet he remains the consummate smug little man, forever puffing himself up with signifiers of his wealth, slickly expressed in Watson’s leering and greedy little smiles.

Along with some cheekily ambivalent nods to national icons such as Irn-Bru, square sausage and a Hollywood icon’s manhood, Norton and Smith’s roles in Taggart and Rab C Nesbitt – as well as affording Gordon some of Hodgson’s own efforts to ingratiate in Scotland by learning Gaelic, to absolute incomprehension from the Scots – Two Doors Down mines its own mythology well, unshowily presented as ‘d’you remember?’ anecdotes.

Colin and Cathy recreate their excruciating wedding dance. Callbacks hark all the way back to Eric’s drunken ineptitude in the very first episode, as well as the lowest point in Ian and Gordon’s relationship, wickedly excavated by Cathy. Still, the direct transplanting of some dialogue word-for-word feels unforgivable.

More satisfyingly, the show foregrounds an aspect of Colin and Cathy’s marriage that has hitherto only been hinted at. And the whole production swings on the musical talent of Jamie Quinn, never expressed in the sitcom but nurtured off-screen as frontman in the band Penny Mob. His leading of crowd singalongs on Scottish anthems and love songs makes the most of the arena, smooths a slightly trippy finale featuring a flying caravan and somewhat manipulatively demands a standing ovation.

A mention too for Norton joining him on guitar to some accomplishment, the unforced and unmawkish sentimentality of this father-son scene indicative of the heart and authenticity at the core of the show, keeping the characters lovable even as they incessantly bicker and tear strips off each other.

The accumulating ill will and confrontational cringe is just about bearable over a concentrated half-hour of television. But for this live 90 minutes or so, the pressure cooker necessarily has to become something closer to Christine’s oft-mentioned multi-drawer air fryer. 

The characters are allowed to separate and briefly experiment in finding themselves elsewhere. Before, of course, being drawn back together again in preparation for the upcoming eighth series, having learned virtually nothing.

Review date: 27 Sep 2026
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Glasgow Ovo Hydro