Fans in Vietnam love Craiglang’s kings of comedy
STILL GAME has gone from Scots sensation to a Far East favourite.
The small- screen adventures of Jack, Victor and the rest of the Craiglang gang have proved a surprise smash in Vietnam.
The first five series of the BBC Scotland show are available on Netflix there and the stars believe its popularity is down to more older people living with their families. Ford Kiernan, 55, who plays perky pensioner Jack Jarvis, said: “We heard that families there look after the elderly in the home as there wasn’t the same pension system. So they get the idea of pensioners being wily and having some sort of value to society.”
It’s a way of life that still exists, but is now changing.
“This was definitely the old way,” said Lien Chan, manager of Nams Vietnamese restaurant in East Kilbride. “You weren’t put into a care home but would be looked after by the family. I still have that culture and my father stays with me. It’s not so much the way with younger generations, though.”
The sitcom following the pensioners and their pals in a fictional Glasgow housing estate is far from the first Scottish show to win a worldwide audience.
Monarch of the Glen was essential Sunday night viewing between 2000 and 2005 but the series, set in the Highlands, won huge audiences in English-speaking countries as well as Vietnam and Dubai.
Hamish Macbeth, filmed in Plockton, also won acclaim abroad and, after attracting 11 million viewers for three seasons between 1995 and 1997, the village bobby, played by Trainspotting star Robert Carlyle, proved a huge hit in Australia.