THE BBC doesn’t have the best of luck when it comes to portraying Scotland on screen.
Too often it seems to assume that what flies in England must be the same north of the Border – as presumably happened with one royal blunder in the hit cop show Shetland.
And now some top bosses at BBC Scotland have had another glaring error brought to their attention – this time in the submarine-based drama Vigil.
Appearing in front of Holyrood’s Culture Committee, BBC Scotland director Steve Carson, BBC director of nations Rhodri Talfan Davies, and BBC Scotland head of commissioning Louise Thornton were told about one “irritating” error.
Alasdair Allan, the for SNP MSP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, asked about what was categorised as Scotland-specific programming.
He added: “Incidentally I also enjoyed Vigil once I’d overcome my irritation that the programme’s writers seemed to believe we have coroners in Scotland.”
As The National has highlighted before when the same mistake was made in another hit BBC show, there are no coroners in Scotland.
In Scotland, the Procurator Fiscal has a similar but not identical role to the English coroner.
The Lord Advocate is technically in charge of investigating any death in Scotland which requires further explanation, but they usually assign such an inquiry to the Scottish Fatalities Investigation Unit (SFIU).
You’d think, with this same mistake appearing in not one but two Scotland-based dramas – and with the top bosses having been directly told about it – that it wouldn’t happen again.
You’d think.
