Joe Mullaney

Matters are bad enough when Mr Gentle tries to commit suicide. They are even worse when the attempt fails. Worst of all is being confined to a hospital bed when a bunch of juvenile delinquents are sent to visit you.

Set in the bleak backdrop of Edinburgh a low level drug dealer strives for making a living and surviving the natural elements of such an environment day to day.

"It never done a woman any harm to be at the end o' a back-hander." In a society where drunkenness and battered wives are treated as 'normal', Jean McLeod attempts to hold her family together. But after a particularly severe beating she decides to fight back.

Two lads in Edinburgh embark on a non-violent spree of robberies. They dress up in clown masks and act as modern highwaymen, robbing coach loads of tourists in the highlands. In the process they become folk heroes to the locals.

Carl is a US Navy Shore patrol officer who is based at the Holy Loch naval base in Scotland. Armed only with a nightstick, his primary function is to ensure that sailors on shore leave do not become too rowdy, and to provide help to sailors in need of assistance. Carl is married to a local girl and their relationship is at breaking point - she wants to leave Scotland and settle in America while he wants to remain in Scotland. With his brother-in-law Willie, who is already estranged from his wife and under threat of redundancy from his shipyard job, the two men forge a friendship to help each other through.

A woman looks back on her life as a political activist in Scotland from the 1950s to the 1970s.