You would have thought, during lockdown - any of them - that this would have been the time to revisit things. I mean, people did all manner of things during the first couple of pandemic lockdowns; they filled their time up with new hobbies, new interests and in many cases rekindled old ones. I pretty much did none of that. In a time when my so-called creative streak could have been at its most productive, I pretty much did bugger all...
Recently however, while watching the old non-MCU Marvel films over the last few weeks, it got the wife and I talking about much-loved TV series and whether we had the inclination to revisit any of them. As we've been living in Scotland five years come the summer, we got talking about a couple of series we were avid fans of; Monarch of the Glen - which started in 2000 - and Hamish Macbeth - which started in 1995 and starred the excellent Robert Carlyle. The problem with watching TV series that are over 20 years old is either you have to know when ITV3 - the nostalgia channel - is going to show them or you have to hope that some nerd and aficionado made them available as torrent downloads. It's not like we even have a DVD player that's set up nor does there seem to be DVDs available of these now.
About three weeks ago, I was searching through my list of downloadable things and I noticed that someone had made all three series of Hamish Macbeth available and that was my cue to revisit the past...
The reason, other than availability, for opting for this was because Monarch of the Glen, while excellent for the first four or five series, pretty much lost the plot and jumped the shark by the end of series 5 and while it laboured on for another two series, when the likes of Alastair MacKenzie, Richard Briers and Susan Hampshire had left there wasn't really much reason to carry on watching. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Tom Baker apart from the fact that whatever he's in makes you think of Doctor Who and the new additions to the cast diminished it rather than enhanced it and by the end all you had was Dawn Steele and Martin Compston and neither really could hold the show together.
So we opted for a trip down memory lane to Lochdubh with Hamish, wee Jock and TV John McIver...
Hamish Macbeth (series 1-3) - They simply don't make TV series like this any more. Despite this being 1995, there's an almost timeless feel about this series. If you ignore some of the dodgy outfits, track suits and some neo-mullet hairstyling, I doubt Plockton - where the series was filmed - is that much different out of tourist season than it was then*. You notice almost immediately that there are no mobile phones and that there is a distinct 'you're back in the 70s' feel about it, very much how I view parts of Scotland in 2022. In fact, there's a lot about the first six episodes that would work if it somehow was remade. The film quality dates it and there are elements that make you realise you're watching a snapshot of the mid-1990s, but rural Scotland hasn't really changed that much in the last 27 years and probably hadn't in the preceding 27 years before they made this.
The first thing you need to understand about Hamish Macbeth is it isn't anything like MC Beaton's original stories. Hamish exists, but instead of a tall, willowy Highlander, he's "A 5'8" Glaswegian with a chip on his shoulder," at least according to Ms Beaton when she saw what the BBC had done to her quaint Scottish detective novels. Not one single character remains from her stories, although in a perverse way they do; they've just all had their names changed, their personalities altered and the stories fiddled with to update them to a more contemporary setting. Lochdubh was also supposed to be much further north, arguably closer to Ullapool, Lochinver and Assynt and in the books the community was extremely small with maybe as little as eleven families living there. However, the premise remained - Hamish liking his leisurely life does everything in his power to stay off the radar of his superiors; he neither wants promotion nor does he want to move away from the idyllic place he calls home, usually solves all the crimes and then makes sure his nemesis DI Baird gets all the credit. In series 1 of the BBC adaptation this is the underlying idea even if it isn't explored.
In many ways it was like whoever decided to make the TV series simply came up with their own concept but kept the name because it was catchy and to be honest with you, despite having not read any Hamish books, I'm glad they did it that way because from what I can gather Beaton's book were sometimes dour and lacked the humour and empathy that Carlyle and the scripts brought to the series.
The first thing we took from watching the first series again - over three nights (only six episodes) was how it felt like stepping into some comfortable old slippers. No, we couldn't really remember that much about them, bits and pieces here and there, but the familiarity shone through and as we were reintroduced to different characters - Alexandra, Isobel, TV John, Lachlan and Lackey Jr McCrae, Barney and Agnes, Rory and Esme, the Major and the excellent Doc Brown, it was like reopening an old photo album and having fond memories flood back.
Yet, compared to TV series in 2022 it felt half finished, half-arsed almost. Much of the set-ups were contrived and while you sometimes wondered how three very disparate threads would tie up together to conclude each episode, they always did, however much of a weird stretch it seemed. The thing is, there was something a wee bit crap about the series and that made it even more loveable than you could imagine. If this was on Netflix or Amazon Prime now, episodes would be 90 minute TV films, with much more delving into depths and character studies, whereas in 1995 while you gradually got to know your main supporting cast, all the 'guest star villains' tended to be two-dimensional characters, usually dislikeable - it had a basic formula. I also don't know if updating it could make it any more black and dark, because what is essentially a homespun 'dramedy' has some of the most fiendishly nasty exits I can remember - a man being burnt alive in a coffin scam; a black widow accidentally poisoning herself rather than her intended victim; a couple of people falling down mountain sides or off of ledges. Retribution for a child killer... Lochdubh could be a grim place despite the idyllic setting and friendly locals.
Series two further enhances the reputation of this series; it keeps the same tone as the first series, light-hearted in a serious kind of way and gets increasingly blacker with its humour and ideas and despite the constant feeling that things often get wrapped up incredibly quickly from the point of seemingly impossible positions. The point is Macbeth is supposed to be a dab hand detective, but is often simply on the periphery of the story until the denouement.
What is strange about the second six-episode series is how it moves the story along; not only killing off a major character but also elevating a minor character into a more rounded position. It also introduced Billy Riddock as Lachlan McCrae, an actor who looked and sounded remarkably like Jimmy Yuill who played Lachlan in the first series but wanted to return to the RSC. I think we only noticed they were different actors because we watched the series so close together, we probably didn't notice back in 1996. Another observation is it suffers from the illusion of change; none of the characters seem to develop past the stage of where they were introduced - a bit like old Superman comics which started every month with Lois Lane never realising that Clark Kent was Superman with glasses - it's probably a bad example, because Hamish is no Superman, but it serves its purpose.
With the conclusion of the second series, we sort of said goodbye to the series that worked on several levels and were about to venture into the realms of the slightly ridiculous...
Season three arrived with some fanfare, but also with the news that there would not be a fourth series because Robert Carlyle was headed for A-list stardom. It would be an 8-part series instead of 6 and the production values increased - bigger sets, larger cast, more money on 'special effects' and a host of new locations. The problem with it was despite most of the original creative team still involved it felt like the success of the series went to their heads a little...
It was an interesting start; the first episode felt like the transition from the old Lochdubh to the new melodramatic slapstick one, where Hamish's raison d'être was examined in greater depth. That reason for his life there was to avoid being seen as too successful to be wasted on such a small community. He loved where he lived, the people living there and his peaceful, easy-going existence, but the arrival of a rookie police constable on secondment means he has to be seen as an upstanding policeman's policeman. This coincides with the Major becoming involved in a whirlwind romance with someone who turns out to be a Black Widow like murderer. After the obligatory gruesome ending, it did feel like series three was just going to be the same as the previous two...
And then episode two came along and suddenly Hamish was no longer in Lochdubh, but on the fictitious island of Lagga Laggas. He's there on a walking holiday, but soon gets involved in a 20 year old cold case about the death of the local Protestant vicar's wife and while it made an interesting change of location and pace, it simply didn't feel like an episode of Hamish Macbeth. It also was stitched together with the flimsiest of plots, very poor scripting and a conclusion that I'm still trying to completely understand. In fact it was clear that the homely feel of the series had been replaced with a certain procedural feel; like the show might end up going through the motions to get to the finish line.
In the grand scheme of things, series three, episode two was probably the last 'serious' episode, because what followed started to resemble a comedy homage series rather than the 'real thing'. 'The Lochdubh Assassin' is an episode which, on the surface, appeared to tick all the boxes but ended up being just wrong. It begins in Glasgow with the introduction of Frankie Bryce, a lad Isobel (now a journalist in the city) takes under her wing, taking him and his mother home hoping for the protection of Hamish as Frankie had inadvertently robbed the local mob and was now marked. What we end up with is an episode that drives a stake through the heart of the show; characters suddenly are acting out of character and finding themselves in unreal situations; Lachlan is almost killed, TV John takes on the guise of avenging angel and we have the most badly dubbed child you will ever witness on TV and a gang of villains that could have walked out of a Ronnie Barker sketch. Everything about the episode is bad and Hamish's involvement in it was almost non-existent; spending most of the episode standing around saying he can't do anything until the bad men commit a crime while crimes are being committed all around him.
It doesn't get any better after that. 'The Good Thief' continues to feature the new supporting characters from Glasgow and Frankie's badly dubbed Scottish accent (he sounds like he's being voiced by a woman trying to do a Scottish kid's accent) is again prominent. In fine Lochdubh tradition we have a black underlying story - a dying child - but by the end of the episode you're just wishing the kid would hurry up and die. We're introduced to a never before mentioned local rivalry with the town of Dunbracken, a singing competition and the realisation that while we were all under the misconception that Lochdubh was just a one street 'town' sitting on the shore of the loch, when it is in fact a huge sprawling city like place with its own train station - also never mentioned before. This is only emphasised even more in the next episode when we discover that shopkeeper Rory is actually a member of the local council and we're introduced to parts of the town we never knew existed. The world in which our heroes inhabit was getting exponentially bigger with no real need or explanation.
By the end of what would have been the sixth episode, all of the weirdness that made the series such a huge hit to begin with had been replaced by poor humour, strange cinematic homages and characters no longer acting like they were for the benefit of the story. It also began to be increasingly more contrived, with stories that made little or no sense either in their plot or why they even were allowed to happen. Could the concluding two-part finale save the show's reputation or could it easily be considered a great series if you simply avoid season three?
Part One of 'Destiny' starts in an unusual setting - a rough and ready prison in South America - where we meet Kenneth McIver - TV John's dodgy brother, an unreliable soul plagued by bad luck and called Jonah by the locals because of it. He gets sprung from his 130 year sentence by an ex-pat with his hypnotist girlfriend because they think Kenneth might be able to help them find the Stone of Destiny, which most people think is under the Coronation Seat in Westminster Abbey, but apparently isn't. This is the first of what will be a long list of lazy plotting errors in this two-part series finale. How did the ex-pat know the stone in London was a fake before he'd even laid eyes on Kenneth?
The majority of the first part is taken up with Kenneth and the hypnotist finding clues from the Major, Rory, Isobel and Lachlan - all direct ancestors to the people who replaced the stone with a fake and hid the real one in the hills around Lochdubh. Before they have to find TV John for his final part of the puzzle, Kenneth realises where the stone is and he sets off on horseback with the hypnotist. In the meantime the will-they-won't-they relationship between Hamish and Isobel looks destined to grind to a halt before it starts again with Hamish seemingly getting cold feet as another opportunity passes him by. The episode concludes with Kenneth confronting his brother with a shotgun claiming there's unfinished business between them.
It should be pointed out that all through this series, TV John has faced a lot of danger and always said he knew he was not going to die because whenever faced with death he hasn't smelled pomade, but the first scene with John and Hamish starts with the former telling the latter his time on Earth is nearly up and he will be dead soon. The scenes between the policeman and his right-hand man are some of the closest to classic Hamish Macbeth as we've seen in this final series and because of John's 'second sight' the entire town is taking his prediction deadly seriously.
The problem with the episode, like most of this third season, is the propensity for almost slapstick comedy. It's like the producers wanted to capture the feel of the old Ealing comedies, but might have achieved this had they bothered to watch any of them. Kenneth, like so many other unwanted villains in the final series was too ludicrous to be believable and his ex-pat benefactor and hypnotist girlfriend just as unbelievable and unlikely.
The second part of 'Destiny' starts where we left off with TV John, his brother and the hypnotist finding the stone and setting off back down the mountain. Meanwhile Hamish and Isobel are attempting to cut them off by using a dangerous mountain path, while the Major, Rory and the McCraes' are hoping to find the boat that is likely to rendezvous with the villains. Then it all goes a bit weird. The series has always played the mystical as part of the ongoing story, what with TV John's second sight and an assortment of characters all being somehow affected by the supernatural elements in these remote Scottish hills, but in this final ever episode they crank of the mystic to number 11.
First off, Hamish and Isobel are saved from freezing to death by a mysterious benefactor who lives in a cave and burns wads of money to keep warm. There is little or no explanation as to how they happened there nor who the benefactor is and when they departed his company; it's such an out-to-left-field diversion it sits incredibly jarring with anything else that's ever happened in the series. Then because TV John saves the life of the hypnotist - who was bitten by a non-deadly adder - she betrays Kenneth (but we don't know to what extent until the end of the episode) and it becomes a race against time to stop Kenneth from delivering the Stone of Destiny to the boat. John keeps warning his brother that if he gets on the boat he will die, but Kenneth is more interested in showing off to our heroes that he'd beaten them, only for him to fall and get his hook caught in the engine of the boat.
John and his brother die in an explosion as the little boat they're on ploughs into the rocks and Kenneth's dodgy employer takes off without the hypnotist. It then turns out that her betrayal of Kenneth was to swap the stone for a fake, so the Stone of Destiny is still safe under the protection of the people charged with that task and now Hamish, who replaced John.
The series concludes with TV John's ghostly father visiting Hamish to tell him everything is fine and that Hamish needs to buy plenty of nappies because he and Isobel will be parents and then the announcement from the British government that the (fake) stone of destiny is to be returned to Scotland, meaning our heroes must plan a break in to return the real stone and that is how it ends.
In many ways, it was great to revisit a TV series we loved from the 1990s, especially as we now live in Scotland and the similarities of 1990s Scotland and today are strong; but the success of the show eventually made it less entertaining and a little annoying. What was almost a soap opera-like exploration of small village life in remote Scotland became something else entirely and stretched the boundaries of belief a little too much. Another observation about the series is that while Hamish (in the books) is a bit of a Sherlock Holmes-like genius, in the series this was replaced by a sometimes feckless individual whose laziness seemed to be his most prominent feature. Carlyle was great as the title character, but in the end you sometimes wondered why he was even a policeman.
I think, more than anything else, it makes you realise that sometimes revisiting old friends doesn't work out the way you expect. It's been over 25 years since we raved about this series and now I wouldn't have been so praiseworthy of it. It was entertaining, but I'm glad it's over.
* Looking at images on Google Street View taken in August 2021, Plockton hasn't changed much at all. What was the Stag Bar/Hotel is now a private house and two doors down from it is the Plockton Hotel which appeared to be a private house in the series. Rory Campbell's shop is still a shop and the house between the Stag Bar and the Plockton Hotel has a wisteria growing at the front of it; while watching an episode from series two, the wife pointed out the wisteria was in full bloom and still there 27 years earlier.
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