Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

TELLYBOX: Guilt is so good, it’s a marvel

Dundee's Neil Forsyth's latest series, Guilt, is an absolute triumph.

Jake (Jamie Sives) and Max (Mark Bonnar in Guilt.
Jake (Jamie Sives) and Max (Mark Bonnar in Guilt.

There were echoes of Trainspotting yet again in the first episode of the third and final season of Guilt (BBC Two, BBC Scotland), which returned to our screens this week.

Or online on iPlayer, if you want to get ahead of yourself and binge the four-episode conclusion in one.

At the first episode’s beginning, Danny (Anders Hayward) and his squad of sportswear-decked, hash-dealing street lads were as perplexed as the viewers when a woman wearing a giant cat head jumped out of the shadows and attempted to gun him down with an elderly pistol which didn’t fire.

Street chase

Cue an on-foot chase through the streets of Edinburgh at night, which echoed Renton and Spud’s evasion of the Princes Street branch of John Menzies’ (RIP) particularly determined security guards to the sound of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life early on in Trainspotting.

Skye (Amelia Isaac Jones) in her bizarre cat head.

This chase was also similar, in fact, in that the city’s geography was all over the place.

Young Skye (Amelia Isaac Jones) and her pursuers should probably get entering marathons if they can cover so much ground so swiftly and still keep pounding away.

Anyway, the city looked beautiful amid it all – even the sodium-streaked tower block (in Dumbiedykes, perhaps?) where Skye’s mother’s boyfriend Big Al McKee (Jonathan Watson) encounters the gang and comes crashing down to earth.

Parallel plot

While promising university student Skye has to approach her shady uncle Kenny (Emun Elliott) to get her off the hook for Al’s theft from the gang, brothers Max (desperate, duplicitous, played by Mark Bonnar) and Jake (guileless, hap-free, played by Jamie Sives) are being reported to US immigration and sent back to Edinburgh on the first available flight.

Back home, Max’s nemesis, gangster overlord Maggie (Phyllis Logan… yes, that’s right!) is waiting for them, to extract her brutal revenge on a farm in the Borders.

In Guilt, playing against type is a speciality, and just like Watson and Logan, comedian Greg McHugh’s Teddy is a convincingly dead-eyed enforcer.

Kenny (Emun Elliott) and Skye (Amelia Isaac Jones) in Guilt.

Created by Neil Forsyth, Dundee’s champion Tweeter, creator of Bob Servant and emerging major voice in British TV drama following this year’s hit The Gold, Guilt continues to offer an electric hour’s viewing.

The characters are sharply offbeat, the situations are dramatically unexpected but fulfilling, and the dark humour bubbles away nicely throughout.

For old-school terrestrial watchers, we’ve gone no further than outlining the first episode, which involved an unexpected and very precisely-handled death, and Max and Jake literally crawling through crap to save their own skins – a metaphor for the pair’s existence so far.

A really good series

Like Succession, with which it shares a finely-balanced sense of drama and comedy, it’s good that the series is a finite trilogy, that Forsyth tells his story and jots a full stop on the page, rather than draining a spent well, Line of Duty-style.

In the meantime, let’s marvel that Scottish television can produce something so good.

A a rich and complex crime thriller, not unlike The Wire, with the wild, offbeat humour of the Coen Brothers at their best, all set in one of the world’s great cities.

After this and The Gold, even bigger things must surely beckon for Forsyth.