Review by Frank Plowright

Series Three of Still Game picked up where Series Two ended, and so People Huv Tae Know! picks up where Hurdy Gurdy in the Windae Boxes finished as Jack and Victor arrive in Toronto to spend time with Jack’s daughter and her family. It was surely nice for writers and stars Greg Hemphill and Ford Kiernan to have a beano in Canada, but it resulted in a weaker episode, with the pathos never greatly transmitting and the supporting cast shoehorned in.

Never mind, as what follows shows Hemphill and Kiernan really coming to terms with the possibilities of their cast. Classic episodes adapted include ‘Cairds’, in which the unscrupulous Tam is subjected to a sting operation, and ‘Big Yin’, in which the solution to a neighbourhood problem may be worse than the nuisance itself. Hemphill and Kiernan surely laughed for minutes after coming up with the amazing “stoorie midouri” line for the latter.

If ever a collection emphasised different styles of cartooning it’s this, with greater artistic variety than ever as new artists arrive and others develop more individual styles. With the big round eyes on the entire cast Dean Rankine could be auditioning for The Simpsons, yet there’s something classically refined about the work of Ryan Fairbanks. His sample art is accompanied by a page from David Ziggy Greene announcing the return to Craiglang of the fearsome Innes. Only Jamie Buchanan illustrates two stories, albeit one from layouts supplied by Rossi Gifford. All art is lively and character-rich, delivering the comedy well, and an object lesson on there being different ways to caricature the same actors.

Writer Daniel McGachey contributes far more than just adapting the original scripts from Hemphill and Kiernan. He supplies authentic narrative caption dialogue for Jack and Victor, and is presumably responsible for the directions on new material illustrating the cast in their youth, what they imagine and visualisations of their wild exaggerations, all just delivered verbally on TV.

Once again, strong original comedy dramas are given new life under talented hands.