There’s a chance you’ll forget, as the opening scenes unfold, that The Island (An t-Eilean) is a ground-breaking Gaelic-English show. Because although you will be hearing an unusual amount of Gaelic, as a shot rings out, urgent phone calls between family members unfold, and a vehicle racing through the night thunks over a crossing (it felt like something bad was about to happen right there and then – though in fact several bad things had already happened), the tension is high enough to make the language seem irrelevant.
It's not – this is the most expensive drama series ever made in Scottish Gaelic, filmed mostly on the Isle of Harris* in Scotland’s remote and beautiful Outer Hebrides, with a strong cast embracing the chance to speak the language they learned growing up – but language alone does not a great crime show make. You need a crime that might not be what it seems, compelling police investigators, a good dose of tension, secrets from the past emerging into the light – and The Island delivers in spades (or perhaps we should say in boxes, given there’s some contraband liquor floating around).
When wealthy businessman Sir Douglas Maclean (Iain Macrae) calls one of his daughters in the dark of night, gasping that he and his and his wife Mary (Elspeth Turner) have been shot, the events that unfold will see all four of his children drawn back to the family castle. There’s oldest daughter Eilidh (Sinéad MacInnes), who’s living in Paris; Calum (Andrew Macinnes), who runs a brewery on the island; youngest daughter Sìne (Meredith Brook Young), who works on the island as a doctor; and Ruaraidh (Sam Jones Smith), the youngest of the family, who works as a gamekeeper.
They aren’t the only ones drawn back to the island, and into the complicated waters surrounding the controlling, domineering Maclean patriarch. Kat Crichton (Sorcha Groundsell, familiar from His Dark Materials, Shetland and The Innocents and also appearing in drama series Crime, streaming at SBS On Demand), who left the island a decade ago and now works in Inverness, unexpectedly finds herself heading back alongside her boss DCI Ahmed Halim (Sagar Radia). Crichton is a Family Liaison Officer, a specialist police role that sees officers serve as a liaison between investigation teams and the families of someone who’s died. For Kat Crichton, that means being uncomfortably close to people and events from the past.
For Sasha Groundsell, it was a chance to embrace her family heritage, and the Gaelic language.
“I wanted to be involved in An t-Eilean primarily to have a chance to work in Gaelic. I've never done it before, and it felt like a really great opportunity to kind of revisit this culture and these places that are pretty important to me in my life.
“I grew up in in the Isle of Lewis. Actually, I spent the first nine years of my life in the Isle of Lewis in an obviously Gaelic-speaking place and at a Gaelic-speaking school and then when I moved to Glasgow, I was at the Gaelic school there too, so my whole education has been in Gaelic. My parents are living in the Outer Hebrides now. Our family are from there. So it's a heritage that feels pretty important in my life. It's hard to maintain when you live somewhere like London, so this is a perfect opportunity to kind of come home, really.
“Kat is someone who carries a lot of baggage from her early life. She's had to put a lot of effort into rebuilding herself in Inverness after she left the island, and as a result of that, has a lot of things to work through when she returns home. She's very hard working and driven, and has a kind of level of bravery, really, in facing those demons that I kind of admire, but she also has, you know, some downsides, as all humans do.
... playing someone with that much drive and that much simmering beneath the surface, rage, in a way, was really incredibly satisfying,
“She was fascinating to play, actually, really multi layered. And I think playing someone with that much drive and that much simmering beneath the surface, rage, in a way, was really incredibly satisfying. It was a lot of fun to play.”
Series director Tom Sullivan (known for his work on several Irish-language films), is full of praise for Groundsell’s performance leading the drama.
“Sorcha did an astounding job, and her work through out the series has been incredible. She’s traced her character’s arc beautifully, and has impressed beyond all our expectations. She’s just been amazing, as has all the cast.”
Beyond the cast, there’s another presence that’s integral to the drama: the island itself, including its wind-swept scenery and the castle where much of the drama unfolds (the castle scenes were filmed at historic Amhuinnsuidhe Castle), as creator, co-writer and executive producer Nicholas Osbourne notes.
“We really tried to get the island culture into this show. The idea was to make it as natural as possible. You know, people obviously speak Gaelic on the island of Lewis and Harris, but they don’t speak it all the time, in every conversation, at every moment. So we wanted it to go from Galic to English and back again. Obviously, the cops speak English, the islanders speak Gaelic.
“And then beyond the island culture is the island itself with these vast mountains, and these incredible rivers, and moors and cliffs, and these beaches which are always featured in, like, the top 10 beaches in the world in magazines, and we just felt like it gave us this kind of brooding, and very, very mystical and mythical landscape to set the show.”
Groundsell loved filming on Harris. “We felt incredibly lucky to have five weeks there. Incredible landscapes, incredible people, such creative value, I think, in really being in the locations that are written in the script, to feel completely embedded in the story, because you were in those places, you're in that landscape, you're on those beaches, you're up those hills. That adds so much texture to the story, but also to all of our performances too, to feel the truth of it as we're there.
... you're in that landscape, you're on those beaches, you're up those hills. That adds so much texture to the story but also to all of our performances ...
“I think this is the perfect time to make a drama like this, a high-end Gaelic drama, both because there is such passion for the language and the culture reemerging within the community and also because there's an open mindedness, in the world now, to foreign language dramas, to cultures that are not necessarily perceived as mainstream. I think there is an appetite for stories and art that is providing a different viewpoint, and I think that is inherent in Gaelic storytelling, and will be inherent in Gaelic drama, too.
“It's been really wonderful working in Gaelic, but it has been a challenge, I think, for those of us who are not the Gaelic old school, as it's something that we struggle to use in our day-to-day lives. A lot of us don't have primarily Gaelic-speaking families, and so I think a lot of us are feeling some pressure about our levels of fluency, but I think if anything, that makes it all the more important to participate in a show like this, because, if we all maintain this feeling that our Gaelic is never good enough and it's never good enough to use, no one will ever have a chance to use Gaelic, so we have to push through, and we have to reconnect, to keep it alive and to keep it breathing.”
The language is very much alive in (and on) The Island, as Crichton and Halim (another strong performance from Sagar Radia, best known for his role in HBO series Industry) chase answers, and her history with this complicated family is revealed. Was it a burglar in the castle when that shot in the opening minutes was fired, or is the culprit someone closer to the family? What happened at a Hogmanay party at the castle 10 years ago that caused Crichton to leave the island?
* A small geography note that might be helpful here: the largest island in the Outer Hebrides has two parts: Lewis in the north and Harris in the south. While it is one single land mass, it has two distinct sections, connected by a narrow land bridge, so the north and south are often referred to as Isle of Lewis and the Isle of Harris, respectively.
This article contains material supplied by Black Camel Pictures / All3Media International / BBC Alba.
All episodes of The Island will be streaming at SBS On Demand from Sunday 25 January.
Upcoming On Demand
The Island
series • Crime drama • Scottish Gaelic
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series • Crime drama • Scottish Gaelic
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