Rab C. Nesbitt

Johnny Depp watched Rab C Nesbitt episodes for accent

Johnny Depp watched old episodes of Rab C. Nesbitt to perfect his Glaswegian accent to play the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland.

Rab C Nesbitt is back on top form

Gone are the jarring references to modern advancements; and the shifts from guttural idiocy to poetry are smoothly managed.

Rab C Nesbitt returned after a wee break of 11 years, but not much had changed. Same vest, same suit, same grubby grey bandage and same delicious one-liners.

The Glasgow Tourist Board might despair at the portrayal of their city and its inhabitants, but for everybody else, Rab is a treasure.

Episode One found him trying to restore filial bonds with estranged son Gash, "I am a recovering alcoholic, you are a reformed junkie," argues Rab. "Let us join hands across the Hepatitis C."

Ian Pattison: I'm nothing like Rab C Nesbitt

The writer claims his string-vested creation won't be out of place on our televisions after a lengthy hiatus.

I know, I know, television institution and that. But did he really need to make a comeback? It's not Rab himself that's the problem. Gregor Fisher, still in string vest and suit, is just as beguiling as the lazy, lovable drunken Rab. But it's like watching Robert Lindsay in My Family. Yes, he's good. But what about the rest of them?

Last night saw Rab and Mary welcome (if that's the word) their son Gash back to the home after a prolonged stint in a mental institution. Gash, meanwhile, gets to know his daughter, the foul-mouthed, chocolate-pizza-munching Peaches. Aside from that, not much happened, though Rab did manage to leave us with a rather wonderful little truism on romance: "The dreaded R Word! That's the worst thing a woman can give a man - respect!" he told his bemused wife. "You respect Vince Cable, you respect Alex Salmond... but you'd drop your draws for Daniel Craig."

Rab C Nesbitt, who has been played by Gregor Fisher for the past two decades, has retained much of its grungy, cooncil-hoose ambience - the men wavering between fantasy and uselessness, the women unillusioned and razor-tongued. Some of the sting has been drawn, though: Rab, an unemployed drunk for the past 20 years, is now off the booze, his son off drugs. Scotland, still the place to go for these prompters of illusion and hasteners of death, is striving to be proper but can, in this show, still provide soil for good wit.

It is no disrespect to the show and its star, nor to its writer and creator Ian Pattison, to say it rests on and draws from the comic traditions of Glasgow, a city that saw, in a long postwar glory, the maturing of the talents of Stanley Baxter, Rikki Fulton, Jimmy Logan and the master, Chic Murray - as well as the later blaze that was and is Billy Connolly. They were acid, fantastic and in hateful love with their city and its culture, which they helped create. Fisher recalls them at their best when, in a moment of park bench amorousness towards his inevitably long-suffering wife, Mary Doll, Rab C suggests that they "nick intae the lavvie and gi'e ye a belt up the knickers fur auld times sake ... we cud gae intae the disabled, it's roomier noo we've filled oot a bit". When he waxes romantic about his own past, she reminds him that he had become a "psychotically disabled alcoholic". "Ah'm frae Govan," he snaps back. "It wudda happened onywey."

Rab (Gregor Fisher) returns for his first new series in 10 years, in the superb Scottish sitcom about the lovable, string-vested philosopher of Govan. Not only is Rab off the sauce, his son Gash (now played by Iain Robertson) is recovering from drug addiction in the psychiatric wing of the hospital, having lost his job, wife and home in the credit crunch. Rab fails to stop Gash moving back in with him and Mary Doll (Elaine C Smith), despite his plea that here in hospital he's got "rubber cutlery, dolphin tapes, the whole nine yards". Fisher's inimitable performance and Ian Pattison's impeccable writing have lost none of their shine.

Twenty years after he first appeared on BBC Two, Rab C Nesbitt is back for a new series. The grubby, unshaven Scottish philosopher in a string vest may have given up the drink, but he still simmers in a fug of aggression, sexual frustration and befuddled warmth. In the opening episode he picks up his son from the psychiatric ward and tries to engineer a meeting between father and daughter. It isn't easy. The little girl, heavily influenced by her mother, takes time off from eating her ice cream to call her daddy "a two-timing man-whore who shacked up with a hard-faced bitch". The dialect may at times be impenetrable, the content is often as filthy as his unwashed underpants and it isn't always that funny, but Rab C. Nesbitt has earned a unique place in TV comedy.

Rab's back - with a chest to rival Jordan's. And thanks to his trademark string vest, we get to see him and his moobs in their full glory. Urgh! We last saw grubby Rab just over a year ago in a Christmas special. But this is the first full series in more than a decade.

In the opening episode he and wife Mary pick up their former junkie son Gash from a psychiatric ward, or a "nut hoose" as Rab so eloquently calls it. But Gash is hesitant to return to the real world where he has no home, a wife who left him and a daughter he has no contact with. "I've got it made here," he says. "Fingerpaints, rubber sheets... a wendy house without negative equity." While Rab and Mary are busy with Gash, Jamesie is attempting to get into the pants of a beautiful Hungarian widow.

He deals with his wife by making her think she's losing her marbles, but when it comes to handling a dolphin-obsessed nutter living in a lift, things won't be so easy.