FOOLS RUSH IN (GUILT, SERIES ONE)

Madeline Albright once observed that it is the cover-up, rather than what is being covered up, that often trips people up.

That is the premise of BBC Scotland's four-part drama 'Guilt,' which centres on two brothers Mark Bonnar's Max and Jamie Sives' Jake trying to hide a connection between them and a hit and run.

The victim is a man out wandering his street late at night in a quiet, leafy suburban Edinburgh neighborhood.

Max is a successful solicitor in a stale marriage to Sian Brooke's Claire.

He also has a strained relationship with his younger brother Jake who owns a second hand record store.

After getting drunk and argumentative at a wedding, Max is unable to drive.

Jake takes his car keys and drives him home when they hit the pedestrian.

Panicking because he is uninsured and also has consumed some alcohol, Jake still nevertheless believes they should call the police.

Max, however, advises against it and the brothers instead carry the man into his house.

On discovering the victim, Walter is a cancer patient, they try to pass off his death as a natural consequence of his illness.

The police appear to buy the story and the brothers seem to be in the clear, until they realise Jake may have left his wallet on a shelf in the house.

Passing themselves off as friends of Walter at his wake, Jake and Max gain access and recover the wallet.

However Walter's niece from Chicago, Ruth Bradley's Angie is keen to find out more about her uncle who was a jazz enthusiast and she ends up chatting to Jake.

Max, however, realises they have a much bigger problem with one neighbour possibly having captured the removal of Walter's body on his security camera and another, Ellie Haddington's Sheila Gemmell potentially having witnessed their actions from her home.

The brothers' nerves are further frayed when Angie starts to ask some searching questions about bruises on the victim's body which appear inconsistent with the official line on how Walter died.

Max's solution is to hire a shambolic, alcoholic private eye, Emun Elliott's Kenny.

His attempt to silence Mrs Gemmell also backfires spectacularly, with her blackmailing him that she wants £20,000 in return for her silence.

When Kenny sobers up and goes clean, he also starts to take a keen interest in Walter's case.

Questions about Max's clientele also begin to surface as he borrows the money for Mrs Gemmell.

And while Angie and Jake hang about more and more before her return to the US, romantic feelings begin to develop.

And that leads Max to fear this could lead to the inadvertent exposure by Jake of critical information that could implicate them.

Claire, meanwhile, finds herself also attracted to Moyo Akande's friend Tina.

Lurking in the background too is Bill Paterson's gangland figure Roy Lynch who gets gradually sucked into events.

Written by Neil Forsyth and directed by Robert McKillop, 'Guilt' is an ambitious crime drama in the mould of the Coen Brothers' 'Fargo' and its TV series spin-off.

Like the film and the show, it's about stupid people doing stupid things but thinking they're too clever to get caught.

And like 'Fargo,' their deception compounds error after error.

With an eclectic soundtrack featuring tracks by Van Morrison's Them, Weval, Can, Eddy Arnold and Working Mens Club, the series is decently directed by McKillop.

It is also very well acted, with Bonnar excellent as the ducking and weaving anti-hero who is way over his head but doesn't really understand how much.

Sives engages our sympathy as an unwilling accomplice, while Bradley does a great job as the American visitor who stirs up a hornet's nest.

Elliott catches the eye as Kenny transforms from a sad sack into a quite skilful private investigator.

Haddington is mischievous, while Paterson is chilling.

Brooke and Akande release some of the tension when they are onscreen but Forsyth's writing is so knotty, you suspect their affair will tumble as Max and Jake's deception unravels.

Not everything works as Forsyth tries to untie his Caledonian Coen Brothers-style plot.

Occasionally the pace slackens and you find yourself wishing the characters would move on instead of musing on what might or might not be happening.

But these are rare blips in a decently told tale. 

By the time it reaches its denouement there's plenty to suggest that 'Guilt' has the legs to go a lot further.

Not short on ambition, it doesn't shy away from trying to reach great heights.

And that alone is worthy of applause.

(Series One of 'Guilt' was broadcast on BBC Scotland on September 5-12, 2019 and BBC2 on October 30-20, 2019)