Hamish Macbeth: The Making of a BBC TV Classic

For fans of M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth novels—the inspiration behind the cult BBC drama—this is the ultimate look behind the curtain at a cosy crime classic with a wild Highland twist.

Welcome to the Wild West of Scotland

In 1995, BBC One’s Hamish Macbeth broke all the rules of Sunday night TV. This behind-the-scenes look at the beloved Scottish drama reveals how the picture-postcard Highlands became the setting for a genre-defying series that brought cannibalism and ceilidhs, marijuana and murder, love triangles and lobster tanks to millions of viewers each week.

With Robert Carlyle starring as the laid-back Highland detective who preferred poaching to paperwork, producers transformed the tiny village of Plockton into the fictional Lochdubh. While they attempted to evade BBC bureaucracy, they couldn’t escape the tourists who soon flocked to see Hamish’s home.

Drawing on dozens of new interviews with cast, crew and local residents, this book reveals how they crafted a vision of Highland life that was part Western, part modern fable and wholly original. Discover the battle over Wee Jock’s fate, the mystery of the ‘lost’ musical episode and how the real-world return of the Stone of Destiny forced last-minute rewrites of the epic series finale.

Jonathan Melville, author of A Kind of Magic: Making the Original Highlander and Local Hero: Making a Scottish Classic, blends oral history and archive material into the definitive account of how this subversive BBC series became a timeless classic.