Cod Creole

The Crow Road. It's being repeated as part of BBC4's excellent Scottish season. I absolutely adore this series, and the book from whence it came. It's a wonderful and beguiling meditation on death, with philosophy student Prentice trying to understand the disappearance of his uncle Rory, his grandmother's death and his friend's suicide. Is it a conspiracy, is it god's plan, or is it all just random chance? His father (played to perfection by Bill Patterson in what is possibly my favourite TV character of all time) tells tall tales for a living - 'it's a father's privilege to fill his child's head with nonsense', and his uncle has created his own crackpot religion. They're all leading him nowhere but confusion and angst. Prentice's stubbornness, nostalgia and desire to see patterns in things that aren't there are all things I see strongly in myself, it was revelatory when I saw the series the first time (I read the book later, and wonder how I'd have felt about it if it had been the other way round).

I'll say it. Joe McFadden, who plays Prentice in his grunge-era get-up, is the most beautiful creature who ever lived. I served him once in a bookshop just after this was broadcast and was left with the feeling that I would never again interact with anyone quite so astonishingly stunning. Prentice's revoltingly successful stand-up brother, a young Dougray Scott, is a study in smarm. Peter Capaldi, as the ever-present ghost of Rory, adds a spooky and unsettling dimension to the drama. And his friend, Ashley, played by a smoudering Valerie Edmond, is so gloriously sexy, like all of Elastica crossed with Anna from This Life, that she is the most unbelievable left-on-the-shelf character since Kirsten Scott Thomas's in Four Weddings.

The whole production is gorgeous. From the opening green-screen WordPerfect typing and the haunting, evocative music that always makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, this is four weeks of glorious TV - period drama now! - that I have watched so many times I can join in with many of the scenes, and I notice have adopted many of the phrases as my own figures of speech without even realising. Roll on episode two, and that familar feeling of being pulled back in time and into a delicious, thought-provoking and enigmatic story the kind of drama we don't really see being made any more.