CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Dare I say it? This sitcom is even funnier without Two Doors Doon

Two doors down

Evaluation: *****

Handmade: Britain’s finest cabinetmaker — The finale

Evaluation: **

Few sitcoms can survive the loss of a central character. Only Fools And Horses was a rare example – and the great 1980s American bar comedy Cheers achieved it twice.

These shows are notable, as many fans claim that the personnel changes made them even better. Buster Merryfield as Uncle Albert made Only Fools even richer, following the death of Lennard Pearce, who played Grandad.

And while Shelley Long was a delight as Diane in Cheers, and everyone loved Coach (Nicholas Colasanto), it’s Woody Harrelson and Kirstie Alley we all remember.

The departure of Doon Mackichan from Two Doors Down (BBC2) after nine years could spell the end of the series. Her lairy, drunken, selfish monster of a suburban housewife, Cathy, worked like gasoline on the script – sometimes fueling the laughs, sometimes setting everything afire.

But the charm of this sitcom is how it takes the smallest variation on a theme and turns it into something unique.

Each episode features the same cast of characters gathered in Eric and Beth’s living room – their gay son Ian and his boyfriend Gordon, as well as the rude and caustic neighbor Christine. For Colin (Jonathan Watson) to show up alone, instead of trotting behind Cathy like a pug on a leash, is all it takes to unleash another gunfight of explosive one-liners.

Christine (Elaine C. Smith) is dying to know what happened: “I’m just asking as a friend. Did she leave with someone else or did she just have enough?

Cathy ran away with a timeshare seller in Sharm el-Sheikh. When Christine learns it’s in Egypt, she gives Ian and Gordon (Jamie Quinn and Kieran Hodgson) a knowing look. “Year-round sunshine,” she says, “although you have to pretend to be cousins.”

Colin is in pieces. Dinner for him is “a fried egg and half a bottle of Whyte & Mackay”, before he leaves his ex-wife a voicemail to tell her, for the third time that day, that he is fine and that he will never call her again.

Everything is scripted to perfection and performed with hypnotic pacing as the characters constantly shift from world-weariness to sudden, chattering excitement. Who would have thought that Two Doors Down could get any funnier?

Unlike sitcoms, reality competitions suffer when the dialogue is overly scripted.

Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker (C4) is a painful example – most of host Mel Giedroyc’s comments seem to have been written by a committee. So she was understandably happy with her pun in the final – after eight weeks, she finally landed a joke that hadn’t been jammed with a mallet and chisel.

As the judges inspected three home cocktail bars built by the finalists, Mel suggested they should drink cava. “That’s a good drink for a carpenter,” she chuckled, and waited for everyone to understand.

The intricate builds, including shelving and acres of bar counters, took two full days. Deadlines have been a problem for this series: a weekend is both too short and far too long.

When mistakes are made, we know it’s because candidates are racing against impossible deadlines.

At the same time, it’s hard to feel the urgency when Mel intones, “Six o’clock and the last big build is heating up.”

I was wondering who has a cocktail bar at home these days. Del Boy was proud of his, but none of those designs would have suited this Peckham council flat.

There would have been no room for Uncle Albert’s chair.