Hamish Macbeth: The Great Lochdubh Salt Robbery

Hamish Macbeth: The Great Lochdubh Salt Robbery
BBC
26 March 1995
Crime Drama
DVD
C+

Regulars:

• David Ashton as Major Roddy Maclean
• Robert Carlyle as the title character
• Rab Christie as Jimmy Soutar
• Stuart Davids as Lachie McCrae, Jr.
• Duncan Duff as Doc Brown
• Valerie Gogan as Alex Maclean
• Anne Lacey as Esme Murray
• Stuart McGugan as Barney Meldon
• Brian Pettifer as Rory Campbell
• Barbara Rafferty as Agnes Meldon
• Ralph Riach as TV John McIver
• Jimmy Yuill as Lachlan McCrae

Also Jon Croft and Bill Leadbitter would respectively return once as Malkie Clunie and DI Bruce, while John Grieve is Whisky Bob but would be Herman later.  (And Pip Torrens, playing Peter Peterson here, was one of the Bingo Littles on Jeeves and Wooster a few years earlier.)

I saw the entire run about a decade back and I recall that it took awhile to get into.  Either the quality improved or I got more into the feel of the show, including the thick rural Scottish accents.  This time, it felt odd that Hamish was vandalising his romantic rival's car, while on duty!  We'll see what I think of the rest of Series One, but if nothing else, the scenery is of course very nice and his little white Scotty is cute.  I laughed out loud at the "three sheep abreast" road sign because I've traveled in rural Scotland a bit and that's totally a real thing.

Daniel Boyle wrote ten of the twenty episodes, based on M.C. Beaton novels, while Nicholas Renton directed eleven of the episodes.