‘Everything is murky in this world,” said Edinburgh’s top gangster, Roy Lynch (Stuart Bowman), laying down a warning to one of his many innocent victims, “and you are lost within it.” That was towards the end of Guilt’s second season, when the programme got a little lost in the murk itself. But with a writer as fine as Neil Forsyth in charge, the third and (by Forsyth’s own choosing) final season of this mordant noir fable finds a way through.
Guilt began with squabbling brothers Max (Mark Bonnar) and Jake (Jamie Sives) accidentally running over and killing a man while driving home from a wedding. Their efforts to escape responsibility for what they’ve done put pressure on the old wounds in their relationship: Max the serpentine, polo-necked lawyer, with his fancy house and his belief that rules ought not to apply to him, was forever being tripped up and dragged down by Jake, a shambling, open-hearted record shop owner and failed musician whose simple view of the world often brought with it an uncomfortable moral clarity that didn’t fit with Max’s scheming.
