A selection of Scenes for Survival releases will be broadcast on the BBC Scotland channel for the first time this month, with three compilations and three standalone films set to be screened on the channel each week from 16 to 30 August 2020.

The first compilation will be broadcast on the evening of Sunday 16 August, 10.30pm, and will include exclusive Ian Rankin short Rebus: The Lockdown Blues, starring Brian Cox as the legendary Edinburgh detective; Janey Godley’s darkly-comic lockdown short Alone; Isolation from writer Jenni Fagan, starring Kate Dickie; and Courier Culture, a timely short about key workers from writer Kevin P. Gilday and director Graham Eatough starring Jatinder Singh Randhawa.

The second programme will be broadcast on Sunday 23 August, 10.30pm, and will include Michael John O’Neill’s heart-breaking Sore Afraid, performed by Maureen Beattie, and Amy Conachan in Skeleton Wumman from writer/director Gerda Stevenson, as well as two dramatic extracts: A Mug’s Game, a sobering reflection on the legacy of asbestos poisoning in the Glasgow shipyards featuring Jonathan Watson, taken from Frances Poet’s play Fibres; and Black Scots, featuring Thierry Mabonga as a young man recalling his childhood escape from the Congo and asylum in Glasgow, taken from the play First Snow / Première neige.

The third and final compilation, broadcast on Sunday 30 August, 10.30pm, will include May Sumbwanyambe’s Joseph Knight;Strolling Through the Meadows, a unique extract from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting performed in BSL by Brian Duffy and filmed in Seoul, South Korea; The Banshee, a haunting comedy short from writer/director Greg Hemphill performed by Julie Wilson Nimmo; and The Domestic, a powerful tribute to the kindness of hospital staff starring Kristi MacDonald and written by Uma Nada Rajah, who has herself been working as an NHS staff nurse during the outbreak.

Further to the compilations, three standalone Scenes for Survival short films will also appear on the channel this month.

At 11pm on 22 August a double bill broadcast will include Douglas Maxwell’s surreal comic drama Fatbaws, featuring Peter Mullan as a man in escalating conflict with the birds in his garden, followed by Rob Drummond’s Larchview, starring Mark Bonnar as a fictional government adviser coming to terms with his own major breach of the national lockdown. Broadcasting on Monday 24 August at 11pm will be writer Val McDermid’s First Things, starring Elaine C. Smith as a big-hearted DJ on Radio Scotia trying to keep everyone’s spirits up during lockdown.

Scenes for Survival is a new season of digital short artworks, created in association with BBC Scotland,Screen Scotland, BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine project and Scotland’s leading theatre venues and companies, with support from Hopscotch Films.