Netflix and Amazon now making better Scottish drama than BBC or STV

The Herald Scotland

23-04-2025

Increasingly the answer is: yes they can. Netflix scored the year's biggest hit with Adolescence, notionally set in a fictional northern English town but tethered pretty firmly to South Yorkshire through its script (Doncaster was mentioned) and its filming locations (exteriors in Sheffield, interiors at Production Park studio near Pontefract).
Then there was Martin Compston's well-received outing for Amazon, the three-part psychological thriller, Fear. It was set in Glasgow and saw Compston using his own accent, as he did in another Scottish-set Amazon show, The Rig. It's currently on its second series and, while season three hasn't been officially announced, the noises from cast members such as Compston's co-star Iain Glen are positive. 'It does feel that we haven't completed that journey,' Mr Glen told the Radio Times. 'It does feel that we've done the middle chapter. There is more to tell.'
The next Scottish-set offering from the streamers – it is starting to feel a little like a conveyor belt – is nine parter Dept. Q, which premieres on Netflix on May 29. It's based on an acclaimed series of cold case crime novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, but in the hands of Oscar nominated American writer and show-runner Scott Frank it has been removed from Copenhagen to a city with the same latitude but (slightly) cheaper beer – Edinburgh.
Emily Hampshire and Iain Glen in The Rig (Image: free) Does that nullify the cultural specificity argument? The proof will be in the watching, but not necessarily. For a start, filming took place at various locations in Edinburgh, as shown by the first set of images released recently by Netflix. Second, one of Frank's co-writers is local(-ish) boy Stephen Greenhorn, creator of River City and Sunshine On Leith. Third, the casting is a Caledonian treat. English actor Matthew Goode stars, but he's joined in the credits by top Scottish acting talent in the form of Kelly Macdonald, Shirley Henderson, Kate Dickie, Mark Bonnar, Jamie Sives and Chloe Pirrie.
Goode, who is thankfully not being asked to wrestle with the Edinburgh accent, plays a cantankerous and little liked English detective assigned to the cold case department by his boss (Dickie). He assembles as team of misfits and oddballs and, well, you can probably imagine the rest. Or you may even have seen some of the several Swedish film versions of the novel series.
Well, nobody claimed it was original. No matter. Good or bad, acclaimed or otherwise, what it does do is once more underline that fact that where representations of Scotland and Scottish life are concerned, our home-based broadcasters are no longer the only game in town – which brings other, tricker questions than the one I opened with.
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Club ties
I thought the kailyard battles of old were well behind us – by which I mean I thought we had buried a sentimentalised notion of what Scottish culture is, stopped peddling it to the outside world (except in the tartan tat tourist shops) and convinced ourselves and everybody else that we have artists, DJs, musicians, writers, producers and film-makers as cutting edge as any you'll find in (insert super-cool city or country here).
However a line in Marissa MacWhirter's interview for The Herald with Sub Club managing director Mike Grieve makes me stop and think. The Scottish Government, he says, only sees and promotes what he calls 'the kilts and shortbread culture. They don't actually see what we do as being cultural in the right way … They certainly don't support it financially.'
Are there right and wrong ways of being cultural? Again, that's an argument we have been having for a long time. Mr Grieve's particular complaint centres on the poor health of what's known as the night-time economy. In particular he bemoans the loss of Scotland's nightclubs – down from 125 to 83 between June 2020 and June 2024. The Sub Club, one of the most storied house and techno venues in Europe, is well enough protected, but the wider ecosystem is clearly in danger, with definite cultural consequences.
Ahead of the planned publication of a manifesto for Scotland's night-time economy, Mr Grieve's words are worth a read – doubly so if you know your dubstep from you future funk. And remember this: one decade's club flyers is another decade's museum exhibition. Click here to read the piece
And finally
Reboots, re-imaginings and reunions dominate this week's cargo of reviews from The Herald's critics.
Theatre critic Neil Cooper was at the Lochgelly Centre in Fife for Frankie Stein, Julia Taudevin's musical update of Mary Shelley's evergreen horror novel for the Stellar Quines company. 'Big, bright and bold' is his verdict.
Neil also took in a re-imagining by Nikki Kalkman of the Greek myth of Jocasta, Queen of Thebes and mother of Oedipus. That one, part of Òran Mór's A Play, A Pie And A Pint season, was directed by Kate Nelson and starred Zoë Hunter in 'a mighty solo turn' as Jocasta.
Then, at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre, something completely different: Calamity Jane, in a touring production of Nikolai Foster's 2014 reboot (the boot here being of the cowboy variety, of course).
As for the re-union, that was on show at the Glasgow Hydro where Teddy Jamieson had his highly polished dancing shoes on for the first ever arena tour by Noughties pop legends Sugababes, now reformed. Did they play Overload? Hell, they opened with it. Freak Like Me? You betcha.
Read our reviews here