JACK and Victor are making a return to our TV screens next week – and now the old codgers have lined up a return of their Still Game stage show.
The much-loved comedy, with its cast led by actors and writers Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill, who play Jack Jarvis and Victor McDaid, is to perform a series of shows at the SSE Hydro venue in Glasgow.
Still Game: Live 2 will return to the venue next year after the new series, which is the first since in nine years, starts on October 7.
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A staged adaptation of the comedy show previously took over the venue a record-breaking 21 sell-out shows at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, which saw them play in front of 210,000 fans.
The earlier Hydro gigs are estimated to have generated around £6 million in ticket sales.
Still Game: Live 2 will run from FeThey performed a record-breaking 21 sell-out shows at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, which saw them play in front of 210,000 fans.bruary 4 to 11 next year with evening and matinee shows in the run, which will again show the elderly adventures of the duo and their friends and neighbours.
Hemphill said at the premiere of the new series this week that the live shows gave the Still Game team the confidence to come back.
He said: “I think it would have been worse if we hadn’t done the show at the SSE Hydro. We would have been much more nervous. That was like a buffer.
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“Even when we were writing that show, we went into the BBC and said we felt like we had some more stories to tell.”
Also in the stage show, Paul Riley will play Winston Ingram, Jane McCarry will play Isa Drennan, Mark Cox will play Tam Mullen, Gavin Mitchell will portray Boabby and Sanjeev Kohli will play Navid Harrid.
As with the first theatrical run, it is likely that with good ticket sales, more dates could be added to the run at one of Scotland’s leading venues.
Still Game returns to the small screen next Friday on BBC1 and screened its first preview this week.
Kiernan, the writer, added: “Everybody was desperate to get back.
“It sounds like a cliche but it’s a cracking vibe.”
This week the cast were also asked if a movie version of Still Game is a possibility.
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But Kiernan said: “It’s a difficult area, films. It’s a big worry and you don’t want to get it wrong.
“Films are getting quiet, Netflix are what people are using.”
Still Game had a run of 21 shows at the Hydro venue, which seats 12,000 people, in 2014, and sold more than 200,000 tickets.
There was some controversy over its run when it was not short-listed for awards by Scotland’s leading theatre awards, the Cats awards, because it was produced by Phil McIntyre Entertainments of London.
When the first stage shows of Still Game were first announced, it was only to be four shows at the Hydro, but demand for tickets led to a series of extensions to the run.
The new show is again produced by Phil McIntyre. They say it will be “a spanking new live show that promises to be their most ambitious show yet”.
Jack and Victor started life in a stage show before being part of Chewin’ The Fat.
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