Autumn on BBC Scotland

In the six months since its launch the new channel is reaching more of the audience than any other digital channel in Scotland and is performing ahead of expectations. In addition, the first six months of 2019 has seen a 64 percent rise in BBC iPlayer requests for BBC Scotland produced content, supporting the multiplatform strategy that the channel has championed.

Through a mix of genres, new formats and talent, the Autumn schedule tells more stories, reflects more lives and explores more interests on screen. From a journey of musical discovery across Scotland to an intrepid group of teenagers tackling their own journey of discovery through a gruelling challenge across the Arctic, the Autumn schedule takes a deep dive in to worlds rarely seen and voices rarely heard.

Pictured: Jamie Sives and Mark Bonnar in Guilt

BBC Scotland Press Office

Original Drama

Guilt
Original new drama comes to the BBC Scotland channel this Autumn, starring stellar Scots talent Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives.

A co-commission with BBC Two and with support from Screen Scotland, Guilt is a stylish, contemporary Scottish drama with riveting plot twists and a strong vein of black humour throughout.

The twisting, unpredictable four-part drama tells the story of two disparate brothers who, while driving home from a wedding together one night, accidentally run over and kill an old man on a darkened street. After making the panicked decision to cover their tracks, brothers Max and Jake (played by Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives) seem to get away with their crime.

However, as neighbours and relatives of the dead man begin to suspect his death wasn’t as innocent as it initially seemed, the brothers find their lives rapidly falling apart as their actions begin to catch up with them.

Written by Neil Forsyth (Eric, Ernie and Me, Bob Servant) and directed by Robbie McKillop (Cleaning Up, Clique), Guilt is the first original drama commission for BBC Scotland. Guilt is an Expectation and Happy Tramp North Production for BBC Scotland and BBC Two.

Arts

Emeli Sandé’s Street Symphony
Announced in January, this highly anticipated series hits BBC Scotland screens this Autumn. Garnering attention during filming earlier this year, the multi-award-winning singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé travels across Scotland to find the nation’s finest untapped musical talent and orchestrate a unique and uplifting concert quite unlike any other.

As part of 4 x 60' programmes, Emeli sets off from her home town of Alford, near Aberdeen, and hits the road for a musical journey to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, Glasgow and Edinburgh to hand-pick her favourite street performers. Coached by the world-class orchestral composer John Logan, her chosen acts are honed to perfection to join her for a truly inspirational and emotional performance with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the illustrious City Halls in Glasgow.

Recognising the power of music, people and their stories, the series celebrates the true diversity of musical talent, whether it’s found on a street corner, in a classically-trained instrumentalist or a chart-topping recording artist.

Emeli Sandé’s Street Symphony is not only a musical journey for the new performers - Emeli looks back over the path of her own career too. She meets the people and explores the places that have shaped her, from her childhood in Alford, Aberdeenshire, through to the massive success of her 2012 debut album Our Version Of Events, to her EP Kingdom Coming and forthcoming album Real Life, released in September.

• Connecting music with people and exploring their stories, Emeli Sandé’s Street Symphony is a Multiplatform Productions series for BBC Scotland

The Big Scottish Book Club
A new arts series to celebrate literature, presented by award-winning author Damian Barr, will hit screens this Autumn featuring acclaimed authors including Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Graham Norton, Sara Collins, Patrick Gale, David Nicholls and Marian Keyes, amongs others.

The Big Scottish Book Club, is a 4 x 60' series filmed in Perthshire and Helensburgh and sees Barr meeting with writers from the worlds of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

This series celebrates books and authors from around the world and shines a spotlight on Scottish writers. The format is inspired by Damian Barr’s renowned Literary Salon, currently resident at London’s Savoy Hotel.

Speaking earlier this year when the commission was announced, Damian Barr said: “Book sales are higher than ever and book groups continue to flourish. From Wigtown to Aye Write and Edinburgh International, Scotland has some of the best and busiest book festivals in the world. And we’ve given the world some of its finest writers.

"I’m delighted to host The Big Scottish Book Club and invite everyone to join our conversation, readers and writers across the country and the world. Books are for everyone and so is this show.”

• The Big Scottish Book Club is produced by IWC, a Banijay Group company for BBC Scotland

A Play A Pie & A Pint
The televisual treatment of the acclaimed theatre scheme, A Play A Pie & A Pint comes to screens in September. Pioneered in Glasgow’s West End, A Play A Pie And A Pint at the Òran Mór recently celebrated the staging of more than 500 plays.

This new BBC Scotland series will show six of the pub lunchtime plays, kicking off with Chic Murray: A Funny Place For A Window, written by Stuart Hepburn and starring Dave Anderson, Maureen Carr and Brian James O’Sullivan.

The play is a poignant, but also comic look at the career of renowned comedian Chic Murray, through his relationship with his wife Maidie, who was, by far, a bigger star of the Scottish variety scene when they first met.

Dave Anderson’s portrayal of Chic - his comic timing and subtle portrayal of the Scottish legend’s failings - has been praised and the play is due to be shown at the Fringe in Edinburgh.

• Each of the plays is produced for television by BBC Studios Comedy

Scottish Ballet - Five Wishes
Among the arts content on the BBC Scotland channel will be the behind-the-scenes story of Scottish Ballet as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary with a unique project.

To celebrate this landmark in its history, Scottish Ballet has committed to making five wishes come true for the people of Scotland across 2019.

In the wake of the project launch, hundreds of entries were whittled down to a shortlist from which a celebrity jury - Dame Darcey Bussell, Fred MacAulay, Janice Forsyth, Susan Calman, Scottish Ballet’s CEO and Artistic Director Christopher Hampson and Principal dancer Christopher Harrison - chose the winning five.

The documentary, which is being produced by BBC Scotland Multiplatform Productions, follows the heartwarming stories of the wish recipients, finding the background to the ‘wishes’ and the delight and joy as these dreams are fulfilled.

Loop/Tune
The arts strand Loop returns this Autumn, showcasing inspiring stories of creativity across the vibrant arts scene in Scotland while regular music strand TUNE brings some of Scotland’s biggest gig and club nights to armchair music fans.

Documentary Series

Arctic Academy
Arctic Academy follows a group of ordinary teenagers from West Lothian as they take part in a life-changing expedition to the freezing Arctic wilderness of the North Pole.

This new four-part series follows ten pupils, aged between 13 and 15, on a voyage of self-discovery as they are uprooted from their daily lives by Polar Academy founder, Craig Mathieson. The young people also find out first-hand about the realities of global warming.

Craig, a veteran of several successful expeditions to both the Arctic and Antarctic, set up the Polar Academy as a charity in 2013. Its aim is to help young people in Scotland combat chronic anxiety and lack of self-esteem by becoming role models to their peers.

The series follows Craig as he works with staff and pupils from Bathgate Academy, where 200 pupils initially sign up for the chance to join the team.

Craig and his team of experts put a group of 20 pupils through a tough training programme before selecting the final ten who will travel to Greenland. The series tracks the teenagers as they are put through their paces, learning navigation skills and camp craft in Scotland before heading for the Arctic wilderness of Greenland.

Craig’s main aim with this groundbreaking programme is to root out the young people who will benefit most from the experience - the ones he says will come back with stories to inspire a generation of teenagers. He calls these children the invisibles. Neither the high achievers nor the disrupters, they often pass through school unseen and never get the opportunity to shine.

It’s a rollercoaster for expedition members and leaders alike as the tight-knit team is tested to the limit of their physical fitness and emotional resilience.

• Arctic Academy is a Freak Films production for BBC Scotland

Paramedics On Scene
The Scottish Ambulance Service serves over five million people, from remote islands to busy cities. With unprecedented access, this 10-part series captures the life-saving work of Scotland’s paramedics as they respond to emergencies wherever they are needed.

Each episode of Paramedics on Scene features extraordinary stories from across the country, with the cameras following divisional ambulances responding to high-pressure 999 calls, 24 hours a day. The call-outs range from air-ambulances in Highlands and Islands bringing treatment to Scotland’s remotest communities, to city centre car crashes and dealing onsite with life-threatening sepsis.

The cameras also followed the Special Operations Response Team (SORT) to the most extreme emergencies, including major car crashes and drowning incidents.

Every moment is captured with a mix of director-shot footage, giving a close-up view of high-stakes medical emergencies - and an in-cab rig that captures the lighter moments between crew members as they work long shifts.

Each episode also features interviews with the teams, providing an unparalleled insight into how they approach such a challenging job. From a quad bike injury on a wild hillside in Perthshire to possible drownings in the Clyde, to tourists in Edinburgh with breathing problems, to dealing with a patient with epilepsy in Aberdeen and an emergency in a remote Borders location, the series covers a wide range of incidents.

• Paramedics on Scene is a Firecrest Films production for BBC Scotland

Darren McGarvey’s Scotland
Activist and prize-winning author Darren McGarvey (pictured above) takes a tour of a Scotland he knows only too well, in this new six-part series which starts in September.

Known to many as the rapper Loki, his book Poverty Safari - chronicling his childhood and teen years in Pollok in Glasgow and the issues he saw around him – won the Orwell prize in 2018.

For this series, rather than a keyboard, he takes TV cameras across Scotland to highlight issues and confront what he sees as the rampant rise of poverty and inequality.

It’s a very personal take on the ground-level reality of poverty in Scotland and how the effects play out and impact on so many lives in a desperate range of ways.

But as well as highlighting the issues, Darren McGarvey’s Scotland also shines a light on grass-roots moves to fight back and counter poverty’s corrosive influence.

In Dumbarton, he encounters a women-led project to get young people and others involved helping provide sanitary protection for women who struggle to afford this basic hygiene need, and in Glasgow he has a line-dancing lesson with the ‘dancing grannies’ whose video went viral, proving communities can come together for their own combined good. In Eyemouth, he meets a local woman, who has struggled with poverty in her life, but is now providing much needed therapy for teenagers through horse-riding.

And in Aberdeen he visits food banks fulfilling more than one need, with offenders learning about the real meaning of community service as they carry their out their community payback orders there.

• Darren McGarvey’s Scotland is made by Tern Television for BBC Scotland

Factual Documentary Films

Modern Lives
The single documentary strand returns this Autumn and turns the spotlight on stories from a diverse range of Scottish society. The strand, which has previously featured characterful documentaries such as The Fort and Jamie Genevieve # Unfiltered, reflects modern Scotland in a direct and engaging style.

In a series of six films, subject matters range from one man’s gruelling battle to reach the top in the unforgiving world of mixed martial arts, a rare insight in to the Scottish Flat Earth community who make it their mission to spread the word of Flat Earth and a look into the world of the Roma community. Developing creative talent is one of the key aims of the channel and each of these Modern Lives documentaries has been directed by a filmmaker who is new to television.

Black & Scottish
To mark Black History month and part of the Modern Lives strand, Black & Scottish is a seminal, identity-defining film in which filmmaker Stewart Kyasimire gathers together prominent black Scots from all generations to ask - what does it mean to be black and Scottish?

Stewart grew up in Glasgow in the 1980s, at a time where he felt there just weren’t any obvious black and Scottish role models. Now a father himself, he is determined that his eight year-old mixed-race daughter Yasmin grows up with a clear sense of black and Scottish identity.

In this film, he brings together prominent black Scots from all over Scotland including Ncuti Gatwa, Dunfermline-raised son of Rwandan refugees, now star of Netflix hit series Sex Education, Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first Black Professor, X-Factor semi-finalists the Cutkelvins, descendants of one of the 15,000 Belizean woodcutters who came to Britain to help in the war effort, Stewart’s cousin, A Place in the Sun Presenter and Celebrity MasterChef contestant Jean Johansson and Graham Campbell, Scotland’s first Rasta Councillor.

Together these role models tell their stories. How did they get to where they are? What challenges have they had to overcome? Are their experiences different depending on whether they are of African or Caribbean? Black or mixed-race? Brought up in Scotland’s big cities or small towns? What do they love about Scotland? What do they hope for the next generation? And what should you do if someone asks to touch your hair?

By bringing together these disparate and diverse voices, this film helps to build on the community of Black Scots and passes on a legacy not only to Yasmin and other young black and mixed-race Scots, but also the wider Scottish community.

• Black & Scottish is a Tern Television Production for BBC Scotland

Comedy

The State Of It
Following last year’s pilot, The State of It returns as a brand new six part series hosted by Robert Florence. Florence leads a range of new Scottish talent to take a look at the state of Scotland and the world at large. Each week will focus on a different theme and feature sketches and animation.

• The State of It is a Comedy Unit Production for BBC Scotland

Sitcom Pilot Season
Lots of laughs and brand new characters are heading to screens later in the year as BBC Scotland, in partnership with Screen Scotland, launches a comedy pilot season. With an emphasis on warmth, family and friendship these new one off sitcom offerings are sure to brighten up the darker nights.

Featuring emerging and established faces these pilots are a mix of new sitcoms and reworkings of BBC Scotland’s iPlayer exclusive comedy web shorts.

Sport

A View From The Terrace
A View From The Terrace is warming up for another 20 fixtures with the BBC Scotland audience after a successful first run.

Acclaimed for its entertaining take on the highs and lows of the beautiful game in Scotland, the show is in line for a return to the channel this season. Adapted from the cult podcast The Terrace and produced by Studio Something for BBC Scotland, the show has a cheeky and irreverent tone that is heavily rooted in the hosts’ love of the game.

A core presenting team of Craig Telfer, Craig Fowler, Shaughan McGuigan, Joel Sked and Robert Borthwick offer a singular and entertaining view of football in Scotland from the grassroots in remote parts of the country to the elite clubs and the national side.

The show also features innovative films which have become social media hits. These include a film about the team from Eriskay in the Hebrides and their sloping pitch and a Wes Anderson inspired highlights package of Arbroath v Airdrieonians. The videos have clocked up hundreds of thousands of social media views and have scored shares from the likes of FIFA and Match Of The Day. The series has also received press plaudits with one observer on a national newspaper describing it as the best football show in the UK.

• A View from the Terrace is a Studio Something production for BBC Scotland

Live Football
Live match coverage of the SPFL Championship returns to Friday nights on the BBC Scotland channel. BBC Scotland’s cameras, commentators and analysts will be travelling across the country to track the twists and turns of this competitive league. The live match programmes will also include previews and round-ups from elsewhere in the division to keep supporters of all Championship teams in the picture.

Live Rugby
Recently announced, BBC Scotland will cover the opening season of Scottish Rugby’s new competition, the Super6. All matches from across Scotland will be shown on the BBC Scotland sport site with the final broadcast live on the BBC Scotland channel in March 2020.