Scotland's suburban Pride and Prejudice is back on TV - we can't wait

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

And do we wish to see a show in which nothing ever happens, the central characters rarely move except to eat, regularly featuring plot lines thinner than Cathy's G-string?
Well, we do actually because this is Comedy of Manners at its best. It's Pride and Prejudice set in a suburban Scottish street. It's a modern-day Moliere, a satirical take on events which looks closely – but without being too obvious – at the social conventions and mores of the world we're all part of.
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As Jane Austen dived deep into layers of social class so too does Two Doors Down. Yes, the inhabitants of Latimer Street aren't separated by great financial gulfs, but their dreams are quite different; they are Aldi versus Waitrose, they are Primark and Princes Square. They are fancy new home extension and can't-be-ar***d-throw-some-Dulux-at-it later. The characters are kindness personified, yet can be city banker greedy. They are Labour, Conservative and nationalist. Sure, TDD doesn't highlight the clear class divide of a Pygmalion, but we do have rampant snobbery and judgementalism.
In the previous seven series, Simon Carlyle and Gregor Sharp beautifully managed to find the dry laughs from acute observations of ordinary Scottish lives, blessed by the fact that Scotland has suffered for years from an ailing health service and tragically poor transport systems.
They made much (by way of passing comment) of our overblown sense of self-importance, to hold a mirror up to the unfairness in our little world, our inability to get things done. Properly. The writers have also noted cleverly that the stain of bigotry can't be removed, even with by a deep soak in Beth's deepest sink.
And they have created a series of wonderful characters to reflect what makes Scotland Scotland; our innate kindness, dark sense of fun, cutting cruelty and a technique for being pass remarkable that is international class. And it's from this disparate, but highly relatable bunch that the dark laughs emerge - and the pathos permeates.
Two Doors Down is full of wonderful characters who reflect what makes Scotland Scotland (Image: free)We all know a Christine, with skin thicker than a trainee butcher's sausage and a neck redder than an Aberdeen football shirt, the self-obsessed, attention-desperate with a searing sense of ingratitude, who makes the likes of Inferno's Dante, Sex in the City's Carrie Bradshaw and Abigail from the Crucible seem like warm appreciative human beings.
We all know a Colin, a man so hen-pecked you can see the pock marks on his face, yet so much of a social climber he wears crampons indoors, a creature so deliciously oleaginous the freckles simply slide off his face. But like Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice he's easily influenced by the bigger personalities around him.
Such as his wife Cathy, an international class narcissist who drinks to convince herself the mirror on the wall has got it all wrong, that she really is the fairest of them all, the mutton-dressed-as- mutton creature with the tongue as sharp as her Manolo Blahnik stilettos. She's a dead ringer for Austen's Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
There's Eric, a man who suggests inordinate decency in a comfy chair, the slightly put upon but genial bloke who's happy to watch the world go by and manages to avoid profanity even though his doorbell rings more often than Beth fills the kettle. Eric is a Stoic philosopher who preaches calm amidst crises; he's Mr Knightley with a Seventies cardy.
Beth is of course Jane Bennett with a pinnie, a woman in love with Eric, despite his keenness to avoid exertion. She's a put-upon peacekeeper and a tea-cup-filling, sandwich and soup-making machine, a woman who cares and worries deeply about everyone. Even Cathy.
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Ian and Gordon are the perfect double act, Tartuffe's Dorine and Elmire who can speak freely and sharply and thus expose the daftness all around. And allow the platform for Christine to (sort of) come to terms with the fact that a gay couple can be open with their lives.
The Comedy of Manners motif is also clearly evident with the rough spoken, f*rt-dropping Alan, who is Eliza Dolittle with a tattoo, being worked upon constantly by his Professor Higgins of a wife, Michelle.
So, yes, we need a show which reminds us how silly we can become. These neighbours represent modern day Scotland, and we need/deserve to see that reflected back at us.
Can Two Doors Down survive without the searing, Wildean wit of Simon Carlyle? Hopefully, because Gregor Sharp knows the characters voices so well, each of them so distinct. And Two Doors Down won't appear dated; it transcends time because the characters are always in the moment. And that's when the doorbell rings.
And Still Game enjoyed a happy revival, didn't it?