Two Up Two Down

1 9 7 9 (UK)
6 x 30 minute episodes

Stan (Norman Tipton) and Sheila (Claire Faulconbridge) move into their newly acquired (courtesy of the building society) little house and find the upstairs is occupied by alternative society squatters Jimmy (Paul Nicholas) and Flo (Su Pollard) – a wan-looking waif with a will of iron – whose relentless enthusiasm and goodwill exert a moral blackmail that makes it impossible to dislodge them.

The contrasting lifestyles are neatly packaged: Flo creates lopsided pots and smocks made out of “special Third World material, all hand-woven, all organic, all recycled”, while Sheila is the sort of girl who can spend a happy morning going through her spice rack.

Stan (Norman Tipton) tries desperately to hang on to his conventional concepts of property, while Jimmy is an Anarchist-Leninist, whose convictions are tempered by the sort of pragmatism that allows him to accept non-organic chips if they are free and who includes shop-lifting under the heading of “self-sufficiency”.

Produced in Birmingham, Two Up Two Down aired on BBC 1 on Fridays at 8.00 pm.

It suffered from being slotted in just before the repeat of those marvellous verbal pyrotechnics by Roy Clarke, Open All Hours, and very few new comedy series could stand up to that sort of comparison!

Jimmy
Paul Nicholas
Flo
Su Pollard
Stan
Norman Tipton
Sheila
Claire Faulconbridge