Destiny (2)

Kenneth and Ava have made off with the Stone of Destiny, and TV John has vanished along with it. Hamish, Isobel and a posse from Lochdubh set off across mountain and moorland to bring both back, and the journey turns out to be the real story. The posse is a proper village expedition, with everyone carrying something and nobody entirely sure what they are walking into. The trek is brutal, and somewhere along the way myth starts to merge with reality. The ghosts of Scotland's past appear to help them, which is either a miracle or a very good television decision, and it works either way. The moorland opens up around them, and the trail keeps leading somewhere older than the map.

The hardship does what hardship always does in this show: it pulls Hamish and Isobel closer together. Their relationship begins to blossom in the middle of the rescue, which gives the finale its warmth. But the ending is not a clean one. There is no salvation without sacrifice, and John's fate proves much darker than anyone in the search party hoped. The sacrifice is John's, and the episode does not soften it for the sake of a tidy ending, which is to its credit.

Daniel Boyle wrote it, Nicholas Renton directed. Robert Carlyle and Shirley Henderson carry the emotional weight of the trek, Sean Scanlan's Kenneth and Caroline Loncq's Ava make properly slippery villains, and the regulars, Ralph Riach as both John and Euan, Billy Riddoch, Brian Pettifer, Stuart McGugan, Barbara Rafferty and Duncan Duff, are with them every step. The ghosts give the trek an otherworldly glow, and the regulars carry the story through some of the show's most striking scenery.

A two-parter is a gamble for a village show, and this one pays off. It aired in May 1997 to close the third series, and it remains one of the boldest things the show attempted. The Stone returns, the mountains are crossed, and nothing in Lochdubh is quite the same afterwards. It is a big, strange ending.