ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the use of northern islands as locations and settings in films and television programmes that are not primarily, or sometimes not at all, about these locations and settings. It emphasizes films and television programmes set in the northern parts of the United Kingdom and in particular Scotland. The chapter discusses the implications for the author's understanding of ostensibly more positive genre films about island life. It finds that the geographical isolation of islands from the mainland can be as much a separation from Scotland as it is from an English-centred notion of the United Kingdom. The chapter draws attention to the contingencies of genre production and notably the ways in which island settings are caught up in a process of exchange: there is always another island that one can set his film or programme on, either within the United Kingdom or somewhere else.
