No Man Is an Island

Grief takes Hamish Macbeth to a remote island, and he goes there intending never to come back. The mourning is deep enough that Lochdubh, for once, is the last place he wants to be. He has taken leave rather than face the place, which is the Highland version of running away, and it is not working. But the island is not empty. An elderly woman named Belle Carter is in serious trouble, and Hamish, even at his lowest, cannot walk past it.

The episode splits its attention between the island and the village he left behind. Back in Lochdubh, the temporary replacement constable, PC Duggan, is rubbing every resident the wrong way with his over-zealous enforcement of rules the village has never bothered to learn. Gerard Kelly gives Duggan a marvellous officiousness, the kind that makes you grateful for the man he is replacing. The village without Hamish is like a boat without its skipper: everything runs, badly. The island has its own pace and its own rules, and Belle Carter is the reason the holiday turns into police work after all.

Daniel Boyle wrote it, Nicholas Renton directed, and it aired in April 1996. Edith MacArthur's Belle Carter gives Hamish a reason to remember who he is, and Robert Carlyle plays the whole episode with the weight of a man carrying something heavy. Valerie Gogan's Alex is part of the reason he left. Ralph Riach's TV John, David Ashton's Major Maclean, Shirley Henderson, Billy Riddoch, Stuart Davids and Stuart McGugan keep the home fires, such as they are, burning.

It is a quiet episode about the difference between being alone and being lonely, and Hamish finds the answer on the island. It is a gentle and funny episode with a sad undertow, and getting the balance right is the real achievement. It is the closest the show comes to a solo turn for its star. By the end you suspect the village knew all along he would come back.