Real To Real Cacophony:Guilt S2.

"A man like me .... needs some heavy fuel" - Max McCall

"You are still falling, Max. You've yet to land - and if you're looking for salvation you should aim a little lower" - Roy Lynch

The second series of Guilt (BBC Scotland/iPlayer, written by Neil Forsyth, directed by Patrick Harkins, and originally aired in October 2021) could easily have taken a different noun as its title. Revenge. Because the second series of Guilt is far more about revenge than it is about guilt. Luckily it's just as good as the first series. Well, nearly.

It begins two years after series one with Max McCall (Mark Bonnar) being released from a 'dispiriting' spell in prison sharing a cell with a 'lunatic'. It's not changed him much. He's still entitled, he's still selfish, and he still has barely controllable anger issues. He claims feelings of guilt, love, and happiness "don't touch the sides" and the heavy fuel he needs is fear.

He'll get plenty of it. Roy Lynch (Stuart Bowman replacing Bill Paterson in the role, in football parlance that'd be called a like for like substitution) has completely taken over Max's business and when Max visits Roy to ask for help, Roy tells him he's already helped him by allowing him "to continue to breath the rich air of Edinburgh".

Roy, for his part, remains as threatening and quietly psychotic ever, even if he does confess a love for the western films of John Ford and Howard Hawks - "men that knew their way around a story". Max, on the other hand moves into brother Jake's (Jamie Sives) flat, Jake having moved to America, before asking the man he once sacked, Kenny (Emun Elliott) if he can become a partner in Kenny's legal business in Leith.

A turn of the tables, for sure. But Max has been disbarred so can no longer practice law. Kenny gives Max a trial run as a painter and decorator but it's not long before Max has insinuated his way into the firm in a typically self-serving fashion.

Kenny's still off the pop and he's still attending AA meetings. At one of them he meets Yvonne (Rochelle Neil) and she invites him out for tea. He clearly likes her but he declines her offer because - for obvious reasons - AA tend to frown at such things. But the attraction is strong and eventually Kenny and Yvonne start seeing other romantically.

Unbeknownst to Kenny, at least initially, Yvonne works for the police and she works alongside bent copper Stevie Malone (Henry Pettigrew) who, coincidentally - either Guilt thrives on coincidence or Auld Reekie is tiny - has been assigned the case of a missing person, Adrian McKee (Robin Laing).

Adrian was a well to do cocaine addict whose wife Erin (Sara Vickers) was in the process of walking out on when he was shot in the head and killed. Adrian had turned up at their large house, high as a kite, with £100,000 in a kit bag. It's not clear where the money came from but it seems highly likely somebody will want it back. Hence Adrian's murder.

With Erin looking likely to suffer the same fate, she shoots the murderer to protect herself. In a panic, she calls her long estranged father for the first time in years. Erin and her father concoct a plan to cover up what happened to the two dead bodies. Erin's father seems very skilled in this area and that's because he is .... Roy Lynch.

Which, of course, brings Max's story and Erin's story together nicely. But in what way and how much trouble will that cause? A lot of trouble, of course. The plot unravels, ties itself up in knots, and then unravels again multiple times. It can sometimes get a bit convoluted. The amount of double crossing that goes on can be exhilarating but it can also be confusing.

It takes in money laundering, property development, historical acts of murder, spaghetti hoops, shell companies, tracking devices, Irn Bru, You've Been Framed, and West Highland terriers but mostly it takes in anger, redemption, and revenge. If very little actual guilt.

All set to another great soundtrack which features The Clash, Skids, Cigarettes After Sex, Ghostpoet, Fat White Family, LA Priest, Mud, Working Mens Club, Wolves by Phosphorescent (sounds very much like Bonnie "Prince" Billy), F-Oldin' Money by The Fall, Crimson & Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells, and Father John Misty's cover of Leonard Cohen's Anthem.

The music works in service to the drama rather than the other way round and though there are a lot of new characters they are introduced gradually so the mystery of who is who only occurs when the makers of Guilt want it too. We meet Erin's mum, Maggie (Phyllis Logan), who's in an "assisted living" facility and we meet Teddy McLean (Greg McHugh), a man who talks about Papillon a lot, and asks Max and Kenny to help him look for his lost brother. Teddy got to know Max in prison and you can't help thinking he's the very lunatic Max had earlier spoken of.

We also meet Sandy (Ian Pirie). A priest, known as Leith's Billy Graham, who helped Kenny during one of his many rock bottoms. Then there's Jackie (Sandy McDade), a contact of Max's whom he meets on park benches and seems to have her own plans for Roy Lynch. All of these people, as with everyone in Guilt, may or may not be exactly who they first appear to be.

There's plenty of humour. When Max is told by Sandy he's wearing a cheap suit he points out it's not cheap only for Sandy to counter by telling him "it looks cheap on you, son". There's a very funny line about lawyers (much better than those round robin emails of twenty years ago with titles like 20 Great Lawyer Jokes) and there's an amusing anecdote about, of all things, My Boy Lollipop.

Elsewhere, Guilt can be moving. Yvonne's speech to her AA circle is touching, enlightening, and articulate and the scenes between Kenny and Yvonne as they learn to live and love without the crutch of booze are sweet and tender. Then there's Max, as before the heart of the drama, played by Bonnar almost like a chameleon looking out for prey. Edgy, darting eyes, nervous energy to spare. It's hard to work out if Bonnar is an absolute maestro or a total ham.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's the right man for the right job when it comes to Guilt. I enjoyed the first series, I enjoyed the second series so you can probably guess I'll be watching the third, and so far final, series soon.