“Almost seven years ago now,” says an impossibly young Joe McFadden in the guise of Prentice McHoan, “my Uncle Rory set out from his girlfriend Janice’s house in Glasgow – to ride a motorbike up to my father’s house in Lochgair. He never got there.” So begins BBC Scotland’s masterful four-part adaptation of Iain Banks’s sprawling, addictive family saga, instantly plunging viewers into the central mystery: what happened to Rory?
Fans of the book will remember that Banks, always fond of a great one-liner, actually kicks off his tale of the lives, loves and many deaths of the McHoan family with the darkly memorable words: “It was the day my grandmother exploded.” The line still features in the opening episode, but adaptor Bryan Elsley presumably thought it best to tighten the book’s focus. He was right: the best TV adaptations capture the spirit of the original while adding something of their own – and The Crow Road, which first aired almost 20 years ago, is one of the finest adaptations of them all, managing to distil Bank’s complex tale into four hours of sharply evocative TV.
Prentice, our hero, is played with winning charm by McFadden who seemed destined for so much more than a career in Heartbeat and Holby City. Stroppy, confused and in the midst of a religious crisis following the death of his friend (and idol) Darren Watt, Prentice is possibly the most realistic young adult to be portrayed on TV. He’s well-meaning and self-obsessed, likable yet frequently irritating, a student everyman who is both the architect of his own downfall (thanks to a failure to attend lectures) and the only person who might be able to keep his family from falling apart.
Determined to uncover the truth about Rory after being given papers he left behind, Prentice risks alienating his family still further as his investigation leads to long-buried secrets of the previous generation. And what secrets they are. Thanks to the astute use of flashbacks, the revelations come thick and fast: not only do we learn more about Rory (a charismatic Peter Capaldi) but we also meet Prentice’s long-dead Aunt Fiona and her husband Fergus. “I’m married to a man who just wants to parade me in front of his awful fascist friends,” Fiona tells a shocked Rory in one flashback. “He disgusts me.”
While the disappearance, and the reasons for the feud between Prentice’s father Kenneth and his brother Hamish, are engrossing, the real power comes from how the series uses family dynamics to tackle everything from religion and politics to sibling rivalry. “It’s one of life’s trials to have a brother who is cleverer, more talented and better looking than you,” Prentice remarks of his older brother Lewis, played by Dougray Scott. But what Prentice continually fails to notice is that Lewis, a budding standup comedian, is all superficial glitter and lacks any real warmth. He is, in other words, a twat.
The show is similarly astute on the relationships between fathers and sons, delicately unpicking Prentice’s spiky relationship with his father (an outstanding Bill Patterson) to show how easy it is for children to underestimate their parents. “I realise now how hard it was for Dad,” Prentice remarks, comparing his father’s situation with that of his missing uncle. “Rory had no kids, no dead-end teaching job, no ties ... My father was always the provider, the encourager, the protector, even when they were boys.”
Most of all, though, this is a show with a strong sense of place, making the most of its 1990s setting – all dark, smoked-filled pubs and raves on the beach – to tell an elegiac story of family ties and the lengths we’ll go to in order to protect those we love. The Crow Road’s great strength is that by the end, once Prentice has finally uncovered the truth, we feel sympathy for everyone, whether victim or villain.
