Two Doors Down

A couple of decades ago, the BBC would normally show an Alan Ayckbourn play at Christmas which would feature a party that would rapidly descend into tragedy and farce in almost equal measures.

Two Doors Down had the same vibe although set in Scotland and adds a dash of Abigail's Party.

Friends, family and neighbours come together for a New Years Eve party at Beth and Eric's. They are hoping their son arrives in time from a stint serving abroad with the armed forces whilst their other son turns up with his companion and has plans to marry him.

The party starts off with awkward chit-chat amongst the neighbours, one of them moving up in the world and planning to move into a more upmarket area. However it soon descends into drunken bad behaviour where some truths are revealed.

The best bits are when one of them admits he is starving while waiting for the pie to arrive. That is common when attending a party and you skip food at your usual time!

Also worth a laugh to see Eric struggling with putting up the gazebo, then his son's boyfriend manages to erect it without problems.

The worst behaviour of all comes from Auntie Caroline (Daniela Nardini) who plied the young Swede, Henning with alcohol before mounting him as he is laid drunk in the upstairs toilet and then escaping before she is found out by the others.

It was an amiable drama, but not as successful or riveting as the Ayckbourn play it's trying to emulate.

I felt it needed to be sharper, edgier and it ended up being more bland. However Daniela Nardini hit the mark and it did later lead to a series.

A treat for anyone who enjoyed 'Abigail's Party', or the televised versions of Ayckbourn plays that the BBC used to screen at Christmas, 'Two Doors Down' tells the tale of an unfortunate Scottish new year's eve. Although the set-up is pure sitcom, and some of the lines might seem clichéd, there's also a sense in which this feels very much true to life; and there's a dark undertow to the humour. People find it hard to get along with those they love, sometimes, let alone with those with whom one just happens to share a relative or an address, and the script feeds off this with aplomb: the performances steer a nice line too, not completely over-the-top but exuberant where necessary. In my book, it deserves a repeat next year.