There's no doubt that the laughter is a little more "vigorous" than the material requires. But i wouldn't say it ruins the show. What lets it down a bit, is the overuse of other characters. This had the real potential to be a modern day Odd Couple, but the minor characters are pretty poor, they just don't gel right at all. Something i think has plagued sitcoms for a long while now.
A great sitcom needs all the characters to fit, even the minor ones that only appear in one or two episodes. Somewhere in time, the attention to detail has been lost. Katherine Parkinson plays the exact same character as in The I.T. Crowd. Really don't think it works. Two maniacal main characters needed a more calming foil in mjy opinion. See Saffy in AbFab, Alice and Hugo in Vicar of Dibley. Not every character in a sitcom needs to be permanently wound-up, ready to explode.
Roger Lloyd-Pack and Clive Swift are excellent and work together well, though i would have had Clive a little calmer too. It all gets a bit too chaotic and ranty at times. Having more sedate routine scenes, like in One Foot in the Grave, makes the rants all the more funny when they come along. The best sitcoms feel natural, The Old Guys never quite feels believable enough. That said, i think it still holds up as a very decent watch.
