Quite a while ago, I recapped a quirky little Scottish show called Guilt with a fantastic cast including Mark Bonnar, Jamie Sives and Emun Elliot. Usually, I like shows and they’re done and that’s it, but this has gone on for two more seasons / series! 2! So I best get cracking, onward into the fray of series 2, episode 1. Enjoy!

We open at a dinner party, where a young woman gives an arch speech celebrating one Adrian (Robin Laing)‘s return to normality after a history filled with cocaine-dusted bargain motels. Erin (Sara Vickers) seems sincere in her appreciation of his boringness but Adrian is conflicted, leaving her sleeping in the middle of the night to escape to a subterranean nightclub filled with red lights.

He returns early in the morning, high and clutching a bag of 100k in cash. Erin finds him in the basement; every illusion she’s held about him is shattered in approximately 3 minutes. He’s not ever been striving for boring, apparently, he’s never stopped the coke or the partying or the bad decisions and she’s leaving.

A noise from above stops their fight, presumably the people looking for their 100 grand. Adrian is shot immediately but Erin defends herself ably, leaving the killer to die drowning in his own blood.

Well hello Max McCall (Mark Bonnar!), hard to believe you’re out of jail already but here we are. It looks like Leith Beats, his brother’s record store that was burned down thanks to Max, has been rebuilt as a Chinese restaurant.

We watch Yvonne (Rochelle Neil) speak about not speaking at an AA meeting and such is the covenant I feel guilty for saying even that!

But detective Kenny Burns (the delightful Emun Elliot) is there, enthusiastically supporting her, so he must be continuing on his path to healing. So much so that when Yvonne asks if they can meet up not in a meeting, he declines. They really do frown on that sort of thing in the program.

Back to Max and his return from prison; he goes into the office and has a complicated, layered discussion with the person who has taken over his business while he was inside. Roy Lynch (Stuart Bowman) will not be helping Max at all is the upshot, Max still has the stank of the falling on him.

Max just never…understand reality for what it is.

He goes and finds Kenny, unfortunately we have lost Jake (Jamie Sives) to Chicago and the appeal of Angie (Ruth Bradley) from series 1. Unbelievably, Kenny entertains joining up with Max and letting him work under his license.

Gross.

Max’s first job is to paint Kenny’s cheery office. He does make an effort, but is easily discouraged and again: prone to rage. Interestingly and symbolically, there is half a cheetah (leopard?) still exposed as he didn’t have quite enough paint to finish it properly. Apt indeed. We know Max still has the predator within.

Kenny wants something too, though, he wants a new life and maybe Max can be the person to help him get it.

Ohhhhh now our stories intersect! You remember Erin, who shot a murderous thug in her basement and left him to die choking on his own blood? She’s the daughter of Max’s old business partner Roy!

She and Roy are estranged, but when she calls, he comes running to help. He’s not quite as legitimate as he would have Max believe, either, he’s got a story at the ready immediately and it involves a number of bribed policepersons.

The music on this show is fantastic, and I’m not just saying that because it’s Leonard Cohen accompanying everyone scrubbing blood and mess off their things.

Yvonne speaks for the first time at her shared AA meeting with Kenny, who listens, beaming, at the back of the room. The sexual tension is building and they agree to meet later, after a quick finger brush at the coffee station. I love that she’s a foot taller than him. I can’t say why.

We’re off to The Pines assisted living home, where a skeptical elderly lady watches another elderly lady be rushed into signing papers by an unsavoury character. If you look up ‘ambulance chaser’ in the dictionary: there he is. I’m sure this will come into play shortly!

Maybe because Kenny wants to run a special on wills at his shared legal factory with Max!

But in comes Roy, looks like he needs to repay Max after all, in the form of 100k for Max to launder. Kenny tries to distance himself, this is not what he wants Leith Legal to be about. Roy and later Max remind him: Roy is not really asking.

An interesting moment between Roy and Max later, Roy trying to regain his footing and understand Max a little better, this new Max fresh from prison. Max feels somewhat responsible for Kenny, silly Kenny with his $99.99 wills as big picture.

Kenny was out just then having tea with Yvonne, wow, I kind of thought they were heading straight for the sheets, good for them for keeping it clean for now.

Max toddles off to see Erin and explain where her now-clean money is, it’s in a double blind trust. Oh Max. He just cannot be trusted not to grab at the brass ring. He’s worked out where the clean money is going and he’s shown up on Erin’s doorstep to..what? Scrounging for more information, he gets tossed out on his ear.

Kenny happens across a body bag, seemingly by chance while Yvonne arrives at work and her policeperson partner Stevie (Henry Pettigrew) looks through Adrian’s missing persons report. He hands off all the work to her, which seems scummy, but he also seems supportive of her issues so I don’t know if he is good guy/bad guy. He misfiles the missing persons report so Yvonne gets wind of it later in the evening as she does all the rest of his paperwork. He got promoted over her, so maybe that supportive bit was just him reminding her he has something on her.

The not-so grieving widow Erin is busy playing cards with the skeptical elderly lady of the assisted living facility, it’s her mum Jackie! (Sandy McDade) is very happy to hear Adrian has gone.

Erin is conflicted when her dad stops by, she really wants to separate herself from him but they’re very similar. “You are me,” he says. And he’s getting old. He needs an heir.

His ex-wife has some of that same spirit, too, Jackie putting the ambulance chaser on notice that she’s watching him peddle investment opportunities of all things in Leith, of all places.

A family is notified of an unfortunate suicide of a family member; that would be the thug Erin shot in her basement. The family isn’t buying it. They’re hard men too.

In our closing montage, we have Max waxing poetic about his psychopathy; he can’t feel love, happiness, Guilt, those sorts of things. He needs something bigger, like fear. I imagine the stranger sitting next to him on the bench at night is starting to feel a bit of that as we watch other things start to heat up, like

– Roy paying a visit to the ambulance chaser flogging a New Leith who threatened his ex-wife, leaving him dying on the floor with a knife through his heart and a New Leith brochure

– the thug’s family mobilizing

– Erin pondering Max’s card

Oh and wait. That’s not a stranger sitting next to Max in the dark with a West Highland Terrier in tow, that’s an accomplice to whom Max hands off a flash drive. For revenge.

And we’re out for today!