Guilt

Great first season but season 2 lots of drawn out scenes with one to one conversations that feel like speeches where you want to fall asleep. Shame. That said, the music is superb and production very good but content just does not live up to these other aspects that are done so well.

This is a very very good miniseries. Full of twists and surprises. Great fun.

Certainly not too be missed!!

The first season of Guilt is one of the most interesting, tense, and well-written suspense shows in recent times. It's full of intricate, well-crafted twists and turns, characters who feel like real people, side-plots that come together in wonderful ways. The acting is superb, especially Jamie Sives and Emun Elliot, but all the others are good. All in all, it makes for perfect binge watching.

The second season doesn't work nearly as well as the twists and turns that make the first so effective become laborious, complex, and eventually, way too hard to understand. By the third episode it's almost impossible to understand every character's motivation because they've all been switched and changed so often. The ending is nearly incomprehensible. And as good an actor as Mark Bonnar is, the camera tends to focus on him for interminable amounts of time, almost as if his face is actually part of the plot.

So the advice here is, indulge in the first season, skip the second. Apparently the third is in the works, and with luck, the show's creators will revert to their original intentions and pretend the second season never happened.

As this series opens brothers Jake and Max are driving through an Edinburgh suburb at night. They accidentally run over and kill an elderly man. Max, a lawyer, tells his brother that he will go to jail if they report it. They establish that the man lived in the house they are in front of so take him back inside. Papers suggest that he had terminal cancer so they leave hoping his death will be considered natural. Of course things don't quite go to plan; the authorities may believe that he died of cancer but Jake gets a call saying his wallet was found in the house. He goes back and explains that he'd been there because he traded in old records and the man had a good collection. He befriends, and forms a relationship with Angie, the dead man's niece... which doesn't impress Max. Without going into details things later get complicated as Angie starts asking questions about the death; various older secrets are gradually exposed and the brothers find themselves in danger.

When I sat down to watch this show I knew nothing about it but assumed from the title it would be 'gritty' and a bit depressing... it may have moments of grittiness but it is far from depressing; in fact it is frequently hilarious. Much of the humour comes from Mark Bonnar's excellent performance as Max; it wasn't always what his character did but the subtle facial expressions as he did it. He was ably supported by Jamie Sives as his brother Jake; Ruth Bradley, as Angie; Emun Elliot, as private detective Kenny; Ellie Haddington, as a blackmailing neighbour; Sian Brooke, as Max's wife; and Bill Paterson as a local gangster. The story develops at a good pace with some plot lines originally seeming superfluous but later emerge to be essential to the story. Overall I'd definitely recommend this superior comedy drama.

Absolute masterclass in black comedy. Howlingly funny yet also a compulsively watchable, hard-edged thriller. Such a bold, cinematic show - it's a real treat. Gutted it's only a 4-parter!