Jack and Victor to return this year

Still Game will return for another series, the BBC has announced.

The new run of six episodes will air later this year, and  be the second for BBC One and the eighth overall.

Creators Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill, plus the core cast of Paul Riley, Jane McCarry, Mark Cox, Sanjeev Kohli and Gavin Mitchell have all been confirmed as returning.

Filming will take place at BBC Scotland’s Dumbarton Studios as well as on location in and around Glasgow this summer.

Kiernan said: ‘Chuffed to bits to be coming back for series eight. Greg and I have been cooking up some absolute corkers, and we can’t wait to show you what they are.’

The BBC’s controller of comedy commissioning, Shane Allen, ordered the new series.

He said: ’It’s rare for a show to attain the status of comedy classic while it’s still on air. Ford and Greg are at the height of their creative powers and audiences all over the UK just adore their world with these fantastic characters. If previous audience figures are anything to go by let’s hope the national grid can handle the demand.’

In Scotland, the last series of Still Game became the most watched non-sporting programme in over a decade with episodes regularly attracting over half of the total audience.

The opening episode was watched by 1.3 million viewers in Scotland, 58 per cent of the entire TV audience north of the border. Another  1.9million viewers watched elsewhere in the UK, bringing a total audience of 3.2 million, a solid audience but short of the 4.1 million average for its Friday-night slot.

Kiernan and Hemphill first played evergreen Glaswegian pensioners Jack and Victor on screen for six series between 2002 and 2007, transferring from BBC Scotland to BBC Two - before returning after a nine-year hiatus in its new high-profile slot on the back of a record-breaking live run at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow.

The new series of Still Game will be a BBC Studios production for BBC One through BBC Scotland. Long-time Still Game collaborator, Michael Hines, returns as director with Jacqueline Sinclair producing and Ewan Angus and Steven Canny as executive producers.

Published: 16 Mar 2017