# Guilt (2019)

> Two brothers who think they have covered up a fatal hit-and-run find they cannot trust anyone, least of all each other.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/80129

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 12
- Episode runtime: 58 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: comedy, crime, drama
- Created by: Neil Forsyth
- Network: BBC Scotland
- Cast: Mark Bonnar, Emun Elliott, Sian Brooke, Stuart Bowman, Ellie Haddington, Gordon Brown, Phyllis Logan, Ruth Bradley
- TMDB rating: 7.4/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9644058/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: mild
- Tone: pitch black, tense, sardonic, bleak, darkly comic

## What critics say

Audience reception is positive overall, with the strongest approval for the first season's dark premise and the brothers' tense dynamic, while later seasons drew sharply lower ratings.

## Synopsis

Guilt (2019-2023) is a Scottish dark comedy crime series created by Neil Forsyth for BBC Scotland. Max McCall (Mark Bonnar) and his brother Kenny Burns (Emun Elliott) seem to get away with a hit-and-run death, but the cover-up quickly becomes a trap, and each brother begins to suspect the other. Around them move Max's wife Claire McCall (Sian Brooke), the local figures Roy Lynch (Stuart Bowman) and Maggie Lynch (Phyllis Logan), and Angie Curtis (Ruth Bradley), whose allegiances shift as the lies pile up. Each short episode turns on another improvised fix, another witness and another betrayal, and the story runs across three seasons in a single continuing arc. Set in a contemporary Scottish community, the show blends the paranoia of a crime thriller with the bleak, sardonic humour of a family black comedy. Its tone is pitch black and tense, with a wry edge that never softens the moral rot. Fans of Breaking Bad, Fargo and Peaky Blinders will find resonance in its portrait of ordinary people sinking deeper into their own deceptions.

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