Hamish MacBeth

I have been watching the
Hamish MacBeth tv series, based on the books by M.C. Beaton. I confess to not having read the series or any of the books so I was in the dark. Was this comedy or drama I wondered. It was hard to tell.

Episode One begins with a man standing in a strem catching a salmon with his bare hands,then running from a man with a rifle and a dog. Hamish MacBeth dons his constable cap and steps out of a police van while the poacher jumps in the back. MacBeth covers for the fisherman who hunkers down among various paraphanalia and MacBeth's yappy Westie. The same episode (I think) involves wife beating and murder. I guess you can have both in one TV show but it was hard to believe that the constabl's heart was really in police work after the salmon incident.

Personally I think the problem may be the actor, Robert Carlyle, who plays MacBeth. He's neither funny, tough, brooding, or sexy. He's a smallish, wiry kind of guy with a perpetual scowl, and difficult to understand. It looks as if most of the female characters could take him down with a soft lob to the chin, must less one of those hulking Scottish criminal types. Not only that, he hasn't a single hair on his chest.

I did wonder where had I seen him before. Lo and behold, not long ago I watched him in 24: Redemption, the prequel to the 6th? 7th? season of "24". In that, I thought he did a good job. Before that (after consulting with IMDB.com), I realized he was in another pretty good series, The Last Enemy, which gave a chilling look at a near-future of complete government surveillance into every aspect of our lives. He did an excellent job of portraying an enigmatic character who kept you guessing as to his motives and intentions. The series itself was a futuristic view of what can happen when government surveillance becomes more and more pervasive and invasive. In an interview, the producer said that it was necessary to continuously rewrite the script as they realized much of the techonology they portrayed was not futuristic but was actually being used now. {{shudder}}

The Hamish MacBeth series never clicked with me, although I watched three episodes. I'm not a cozy mystery reader so maybe that's why. I like my mysteries with plenty of police procedurals and little humor. Realistic, I suppose you'd say, ala Prime Suspect or Wire in the Blood