An accident, a dead man and two dissimilar brothers entangled in a web of guilt, atonement and responsibility: a Scottish series shows the power that chance can have over fate.
Berlin – Two men drive on a quiet street in Edinburgh at night. They chat. Then there is an impact. Both utter hysterical screams. An old man is lying on the street with his eyes wide open – mouse dead. What now?
Shortly before the accident, one of the two raved about the wedding celebration they attended together. About how nice he found it that the bride and groom let butterflies fly in the sky. The other complained that there were no free drinks for the guests because of the expensive butterfly campaign. “You have no heart,” said one. “And you’ve got too much of it,” muttered the other. This makes it clear in the first three minutes of the BBC series “Guilt – Nobody’s to Blame” how the roles are distributed between the two men, two brothers. The four-part show runs on Arte on Thursday from 10 p.m.
There is the cold-blooded Max (Mark Bonnar), the older of the two, who has a fancy car, a nice house, a pretty wife and a law firm. Meek Jake (Jamie Sives) lives in a small apartment, has no car, no wife and works in a record store bought by his brother. The two have nothing in common, but now the accident connects them. The secret. Because Max wants to cover up everything, keep the police away from him. His brother, on the other hand, has “lived half his life and has nothing to lose”.
How do you deal with missed opportunities in life? With sins, guilt and responsibility to yourself, but above all to others? Those are the themes of this crime series. The dead pensioner Walter forms the superstructure for the Kammerspiel, in the center of which the relationship between the brothers is dismantled one after another. And sometimes dramatically, then again like a comedy, almost slapstick-like.
The brothers build up a structure of lies that chains the two of them together – even though they didn’t want anything to do with each other for 40 years. “If you turn away from me now, we’re both screwed,” Max warns his brother. Incidentally, he did not finance the record shop for him out of welfare, but to use this business for his financial frauds. But Jake sees a second chance for a better life on the horizon – and that in the form of the dead man’s niece: Angie (Ruth Curtis) from Chicago. The problem: she asks questions about her uncle’s death. But is she really the niece from America? And what about the mysterious neighbor who claims to have seen everything that night and tries to blackmail Max?
Each character in the series has a secret. And it’s a pleasure to see the characters struggle for 50 minutes each and every episode to keep the whole mess in check. Above all Max, whose perfect life is a facade that is increasingly dissolving. The pity is limited. In the end, everyone gets what they deserve. The association with Cain and Abel is obvious. Here the younger brother is not slain, but manipulated and oppressed. And that’s a little death too. And to relate this tragedy with a pinch of black humor is the fine art that succeeds here. dpa
