Review by Frank Plowright
The screen aliases of comedy writers and performers Greg Hemphill and Ford Keirnan are Jack and Victor, elderly residents of Glasgow’s fictional Craiglang estate. They’re under no illusions about being seen as washed-up coffin dodgers, nor about their area being a shitehole. Their lives are restricted to the Osprey Heights tower block, the Klansman pub, and Navid’s grocery store, featuring his never seen, but often heard acerbic wife. Their pals are equally bereft of illusion, Ida providing the local gossip, Tam as tight as a gnat’s chuff and Winston more likely to rail against the dimming light. The formula and cast sustained nine TV series and He Who Hingeth Aboot adapts the first over six chapters.
Adapting a much loved comedy show as comics is a risky proposition. Not all properties would guarantee creative success, but because Still Game has always been character based the transition is seamless. However, this isn’t just a case of adapting the scripts, which Daniel McGachey handles well, but transforming the cast into genuine cartoon characters and McGachey and the artists bringing their own ideas to the table. Comics enables the illustrative exaggeration seen on the sample art, visual jokes not possible on TV, particularly with flashbacks, and McGachey gives Jack and Victor narrative caption voiceovers, initially effective in introducing the other regulars.
The captions feature memorable descriptions and useful transitions, and importantly there’s no toning down the evocative Glasgow dialect, as much a part of the series as the characters. While primarily applying the sitcom formula of a trapped cast making the best of their circumstances, Still Game is richer for moments touching the heart, such as the discussion about how many bars Jack and Victor can afford on the electric fire, and Victor’s son never having time for his father. For the most part, though, there’s a lack of sentimentality in pointing out how crap life can be for elderly people without means. The visit to shabby estate pub run by the equally trapped Bobby, bearer of TV’s greatest mullet, is one of life’s highlights for offering companionship.
Four different cartoonists contribute, with Kenneth Anderson (sample spread left) and Gary Welsh (sample spread right) each handling two chapters, and Jamie Buchanan and Dean Rankine one apiece. They capture most of the cast, although all have difficulty with Tam as played by Mark Cox, and recreate Craiglang as if Glebe Street’s less desirable neighbour, packing in the visual jokes. Ramping up the physical comedy does no harm as the original scripts have their ludicrous slapstick moments.
If anything, transferring the plots to comics reveals how tightly pieced together they were in the first place, and it’s already apparent how Hemphill and Kiernan were generous writer/performers in giving the supporting cast funny lines.
Despite a transformation that adds to the scripts, there may be a slight disappointment that there’s no new material. A volume adapting the second series is already planned, so look out for Hurdy Gurdy Gurdy in the Windae Boxes.
