Guilt, BBC Scotland
There’s much riding on Guilt for BBC Scotland, now seven months into its life and with a somewhat precarious hold on the nation’s affections. Ratings matter, of course, but in critical terms you stand or fall on the success of your dramatic output. Guilt was our first real chance to test that maxim and see what the panjandrums at Pacific Quay have been spending our money on.
The answer’s in: Guilt is a stylish and pleasingly stylised black comedy which, though it felt at points like a re-tread of something the Coen Brothers or Shane Meadows or even Irvine Welsh might produce, was also very much Its Own Thing.
It helped that Neil Forsyth’s nimble script dropped regular zingers, particularly in the dialogue between the squabbling McCall brothers Max (Mark Bonnar) and Jake (Jamie Sives). It also helped that Bonnar and Sives are actual Leithers playing actual Leithers. Indeed the pair have known each other since primary school. Sure, huge chunks of the Edinburgh-set drama were filmed in East Kilbride and Glasgow and sure, actors are paid to act – but the bona fides of connection and accent added something fresh to the mix.
Jake is a feckless dreamer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock music (Forsyth’s only lapse into cliché). He has been set up with his own record shop, Leith Beats, by brother Max, a none too scrupulous lawyer. Customers are scarce but Jake passes the time by writing his own liner notes and slipping them into the sleeves (naturally, Leith Beats specialises in vinyl). It was Jake who was driving Max’s car home from a wedding in Fife when they ran over and killed an old man called Walter, the action which opened episode one. They moved Walter's body into his house, which happened to be next door to where the accident happened. It was found there later and natural causes assumed. But Jake dropped his wallet in Walter’s sitting room, which meant pretending to have known Walter. Which meant going to the wake to retrieve the wallet. Which meant falling under the spell of Walter’s only living relative – his sassy, music-loving American niece Angie (Ruth Bradley), just arrived from Chicago to tie up her uncle’s affairs. That Angie may not be who she says she is was one of the teasers Guilt left us with as episode one closed – that and the appearance of neighbour Sheila Gemmell (Ellie Haddington), who hissed at Max the two words he really didn’t want to hear: “I saw”. So there we have it: an increasingly complicated cover-up, a love interest, a witness. Expect significant twists in the further three episodes – and a nod at the very least when the BAFTAs are handed out.
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