Still Game

Jack and Victor have known each other long enough to finish an argument without improving it. Still Game follows their retirement in Craiglang, where a trip to the shop or pub can become the day's major event.

Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill make the friendship feel lived-in. The insults work because the affection does not need to be announced, and the supporting neighbours have enough habits and grievances to generate trouble without a grand premise. Navid, Isa, Winston and the Clansman regulars make the community worth returning to.

The comedy is broad, but the small practical difficulties are recognisable: money, pride, loneliness and the desire not to be treated as though life has already finished. The programme can become moving without abandoning the characters' capacity to behave ridiculously.

It is warm, sharply local comfort television. Derry Girls finds comparable comic value in a specific community at a different stage of life. Still Game is particularly good company when the ideal plot is two old friends finding something new to complain about.