Big Trouble in Little Edinburgh: Max & Jake Come Home in ‘Guilt’s Season 3 Premiere

Guilt’s Season 3 premiere catches up with self-serving, shady Max McCall (Mark Bonnar) a year after setting up mobster Roy Lynch (Stuart Bowman) to be killed and escaping Edinburgh. Max and his dopey brother Jake (Jamie Sives) live above Jake’s bar in Chicago. Even farther from the cushy life Max led before covering up vehicular manslaughter and getting in too deep with mobsters, his apartment is a trash heap, and he’s got mice for roommates. 

He keeps the books at the bar, which is failing spectacularly. Jake blames Max, who points out that the bar was failing before he arrived; he just didn’t know it. Jake and Angie (Ruth Bradley) are still together, but Angie is fed up with their broke existence, her night shift job, and Jake’s zany schemes to make the bar successful. She tries to break up with him but Jake insists he’ll make things better.

Jake discovers Max is running a scheme, having accumulated $300 grand in credit using the bar as collateral. Jake announces plans to run away with Angie, who was apparently playing the long game: she skips out with Jake’s money, siccing ICE officers on them as she leaves. The brothers get deported. 

Look out, Scotland!

Teddy (Greg McHugh), Max’s scary former cellmate, is now part of a vast illegal operation growing the “purest organically cultivated marijuana in Scotland,” owned by none other than widow-turned-mob-boss Maggie Lynch (Phyllis Logan). It seems he’s been forgiven, or maybe blackmailed, for Roy’s murder. When an officer comes sniffing around the growhouse, Maggie pressures Stevie Malone (Henry Pettigrew) to intervene. Stevie’s a disgraced and now demoted officer. However, instead of doing Maggie’s bidding, he offers the intel on the growhouse to his former partner, Yvonne (now played by Isaura Barbé-Brown). Yvonne is now living with Kenny (Emun Elliott), and they’re trying to have a baby.

Kenny’s niece, Skye (Amelia Isaac Jones), is caught up in Maggie’s dangerous and lucrative new business. She owes 20 grand to a local gang of drug dealers run by Danny (Anders Hayward). She started selling weed to pay for college loans, but her mom’s boyfriend, the go-between, was pocketing the cash and not delivering it up the chain. Skye tries to scare the dealers off, but her borrowed gun is fake. In return, they kill her mom’s boyfriend. Although the boyfriend was stealing from them, Danny warns Skye the debt is now hers... and his. Offering to help his niece but without the funds to pay her debt, Kenny and Skye stake out Danny’s gang. Then Kenny buys weed from them. When Yvonne and other police investigate the boyfriend’s murder scene, in his pocket is the “clean” weed that Maggie’s operation grows.

To be continued, apparently..... 

Max and Jake arrive at Edinburgh Airport and are immediately detained when their passports show they’ve been deported and Max has violated parole. They use each of their allotted phone calls on Kenny, who declines to help them, twice. The brothers are suddenly released... to Maggie’s henchmen. Nabbing them from the airport means her empire’s reach must have grown significantly over the past year.

They are taken to see Maggie; Jake and Max fight in the back of the henchmen’s van. Max is pissed that Jake went to Angie instead of him when he discovered the laundering scheme. He insists he was going to split the money with Jake. Jake says none of this would have happened if Max hadn’t hit Walter. Max sneers, “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer, other than to say that you hit Walter.” So it’s season three, and still no semblance of guilt or accountability from either brother.

In a farmhouse at the site of their marijuana operation, Maggie confronts Max and Jake. She’s tossed the pretense of using a wheelchair, praising “a bit of physiotherapy,” and says the beauty of dementia is you can forget you ever had it. She tells Max he left them with nothing, and she’s had to be very hands-on. Jake butts in and tries to say he’s not involved, but Maggie disagrees. Max tries to finagle some control over the situation, but Maggie shuts him down.

Maggie then pulls the ace from her sleeve: Roy Lynch walks into the warehouse – he’s not dead, after all. Teddy is at his side, and Max is surprised he’s working with the Lynches. “They killed your brother,” he points out, to which Teddy answers, “He knew my dad. You know about dads, Maxie.” Max tries to plead with Roy. When that doesn’t work, he switches to threats, saying he knows more about Roy’s finances than they think he does. “Why do you think you’re here?” Roy shouts. “You tried to kill me, Max. You tried to ruin us. And you cost me my daughter. That can only end one way.”

The attempted murdering is interrupted by a police raid led by Yvonne and Stevie. Roy distracts the cops so Teddy can get Maggie to safety. Max and Jake escape the henchmen left behind when Jake blinds him with a chemical sprayer. So as not to be seen by the police, the brothers crawl through mud and manure.

After a short car chase, the cops catch Roy, who refuses to go to Saughton (prison). He pretends to reach for a gun, and Stevie makes the call that gets Roy shot and killed. Maggie and Teddy hear the gunshot as they’re getting away. Later, Max drives Jake in a stolen van to an unnamed location as far from Maggie as they can get on a half-tank of petrol.

Bits and Bobs

• If you enjoyed the first two seasons no doubt you’ve come back for the third, but I haven’t found a way to care about most of these characters despite the caliber of the acting. 
• Max is selfish and untrustworthy, and Jake is a bumbling dunce. Kenny is uninspiring, and this episode devotes an uncomfortable amount of dialogue to his sperm. 
• Then there’s Skye, who opens the episode by attempting to shoot Danny in the face while wearing a cat costume. Kay. 
• Of all the players, Maggie is the most interesting, and Logan’s performance is solid and unexpected. 
• Where are Max and Jake headed? 
• How will they survive without money or allies? 

Guilt’s third and final season continues for three more episodes on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Prime Video Channel. All four episodes are available as a binge for PBS Passport members. As always, check your local listings.