Darren McGarvey's Scotland - Season 1

In 2018 Dundee was the drug death capital of Europe - Darren McGarvey goes behind the headlines to find out why. Meeting those caught up in the problem, he discovers an unexpected reason.

In Edinburgh Darren examines the link between poverty and crime: how does it impact kids and their future? But soon Darren discovers a hidden problem: wealth.

West Dunbartonshire is the worst place in Scotland to be a woman, yet the bordering council is the best place to be a woman in the whole of the UK - Darren wants to find out why.

In Scotland's largest city one in four men die younger than anywhere else in the UK - it's called 'the Glasgow effect'. Darren goes behind the headline to discover hidden reasons.

In this fifth episode, Darren McGarvey travels to the Borders. The terrain may not be familiar to him but the issues are.

It is a large area stretching from south of Lothian to north of the English border, with rolling hills and farmland, but as Darren observes: "You could be forgiven, when immersed in such idyllic scenery like this, for thinking that poverty is not an issue here in the Borders. It actually is, it's just that it isn't visible in the same way as some of Scotland's urban areas."

Along with poverty, there is an issue with mental health problems, and Darren meets a range of people to understand how this impacts in rural areas.

Aberdeen and the sharp contrast between its rich and poor - and the resulting homelessness - is the focus of the sixth and last destination in this six-part series.
Scotland's oil capital since the 1970s, the city has a swathe of high earners - but is it is now being hit hard, with more food banks than any other city.