Older, wiser and sober – Rab C Nesbitt returns to our screens

Published on Wednesday 13 January 2010 21:36

HE FIRST appeared in the 1980s, railing against the ravages and inequities of Thatcherite Britain.

But the Govan philosopher Rab C Nesbitt will next week shamble back on to our screens for his first full series of the 21st century.

Dried out and working part-time as an addiction counsellor to help those he sees heading on the same path to oblivion that he had been travelling in the 80s and 90s, the new cleaned-up Rab hits 60 and has intimations of mortality.

According to the series creator Ian Pattison, sobering Govan's most famous drunk was in keeping with the show's gritty take on reality. He said: "I just felt it would have been unrealistic to have him continue drinking at this age and still be coherent.

"It would have been cheap not to have moved him on – I don't think people live that way.

"They don't get to their 60s without making a few compromises about their lifestyles. That made it more interesting for me, trying to explore a sober Rab and make it funny and relevant. I couldn't resort to him falling over and swearing just to get a laugh.

"I would hope it's still fun – it's just a different type of fun."

The new series finds Rab, played by Gregor Fisher, facing a whole new set of contemporary challenges: campaigning against mobile phone masts; reuniting his son Gash with his young daughter; and, more alarmingly, taking up cross-dressing as part of a complex social security fraud.

According to Dr John Cook, media lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, his reappearance after almost a decade was due in part to Dr Who's success, which has fuelled television bosses' enthusiasm for bringing back past hits.

Dr Cook added that both shows came with existing audiences and were therefore a safer bet than trying new sitcoms.

But Dr Cook said Rab was still relevant: "I think when Rab C Nesbitt came along, it was like Scotland's reply to Thatcherism. In a sense, he was a symbol of the rise of the underclass. Those ideas are still here today, the Channel 4 show Shameless is very much about that."

Reluctant to revisit the show, it took the 2007 Glasgow Airport terror attack to persuade Pattison to think again. He said: "I was in Budapest watching it on television and it suddenly flashed through my mind, watching this jeep crashed into the departure lounge with flames leaping around, I wonder what Rab would make of that? The only way to find out is to write about it and so we put the wheels in motion. It was never forced, it had to feel right."

However, Scotsman television critic Paul Whitelaw was less enthusiastic about the show's return: "I think it's a really bad idea. I think the show had run out of steam even before it finished back in 1999. I'm quite bemused by its return. It may just come back and then quietly go away again."