A Perfectly Simple Explanation

A hellfire sect rolls into Lochdubh, and its leader Malachi McBean takes one look at the village and declares it the new Gomorrah. Hamish, naturally, is the devil incarnate. It is the kind of accusation that is hard to argue with in a small town, and Hamish's reputation takes a beating while his tolerance is stretched to breaking. The denunciation follows him everywhere, into the shops and the streets, and there is no talking his way out of it. The sect has its own way of doing things, and its version of scripture leaves no room for a village policeman.

What he discovers when he investigates is stranger and sadder than any simple case of religious fervour. The McBean family circle, Jubel and Bethsheba included, has more to do with control than with God, and the truth surfaces slowly. Hamish keeps digging because the accusation sits wrong with him, and because the sect's certainty is the surest sign that something is being hidden. The faithful few grow fewer as the episode goes on, and the sect's certainty starts to look like something else entirely.

And on the home front, Alex and Hamish begin cohabiting, a development the show handles with its usual lightness. The cohabiting is a bigger story in Lochdubh than the Gomorrah business, or at least a more popular one. Daniel Boyle wrote the episode, Nicholas Renton directed, and it aired in March 1996, opening the second series. Philip Jackson gives Malachi a proper menace, all conviction and no doubt, with Ron Donachie as Zoot McPherrin. Robert Carlyle holds the centre as a man being publicly damned for no crime at all, Valerie Gogan is Alex, Shirley Henderson's Isobel Sutherland hovers nearby, and Billy Riddoch, Stuart McGugan and Barbara Rafferty keep the village itself in motion.

The title is the joke. There is no perfectly simple explanation for any of it, and the episode is smart enough not to force one. It is a strong start to the season, and the menace is real enough that the laughs never feel cheap.