Scene 1: Missing Persons

The remains of the crofting community at Gencalvie in Sutherland cleared in 1845 are taken as the starting point for a missing persons case - about 2 million who emigrated from the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland between 1830 and 1930.

Scenes 2-7: Attitudes to the Highland Clearances

The evidence of messages scratched on the windows at Croick Church by those cleared from Glencalvie are considered together with conflicting attitudes towards the Clearances in the contemporary press. The sympathetic attitudes of The Times and the Inverness Courier towards the crofters are contrasted with the harsher, more 'realistic' attitude of the Scotsman. Later, evidence given to the Napier Commission in 1883 from the archives of the National Library of Scotland is cited and Professor Tom Devine poses a number of questions challenging received perceptions of the Clearances concerning their scale, the extent to which violence was involved, and their relative importance as a cause of emigration.

Scenes 8-10: Reasons for Emigration from the Highlands

By way of contrast there follows the case of some 3000 Gaelic speakers from Barra who wanted to emigrate, attracted by the thought of a better life in Canada and Australia, about half of whom were assisted to do so by their landlord. Some of them turned up at the door of St Giles in Edinburgh looking for food and shelter and it is from here that the Scots Detective presents their story. The parts played by poverty, overpopulation, and the potato famine in encouraging emigration are also briefly considered, as is the role of assisted emigration by government, landlords, and the Highlands and Islands Emigration Society. The Scots Detective meets Iain MacPherson - a young Canadian Gaelic speaker now teaching in the Gaelic College on Skye - who tells how his ancestors left the Islands for Canada.

Scenes 11-12: Leaving the Lowlands

The Scots Detective now moves to a Lowland farming location, making the point that many emigrants were from the Lowlands - skilled artisans and farmers ambitious to make a better life in the colonies. Half a dozen letters home from emigrants from the 1830s and 1870s are quoted. They are mainly from Aberdeenshire, and encourage others to emigrate by emphasising the favourable opportunities and superior lifestyle to be had abroad.

Scene 13: Reasons for Emigration from the Lowlands

Tom Devine poses the paradox of emigration from Scotland. Unlike Ireland and Norway - rural countries with mass emigration, Scotland was an industrial country. But Scotland's heavy industry had cyclical problems. Low wages and overcrowded housing led many with industrial skills and experience to seek a better life abroad.

Scenes 14-15: Evidence of Lowland Emigration

The Scots Detective looks at evidence such as posters for emigrant ships, and Scottish place-names abroad, to emphasise the fact that people emigrated from all parts of the Lowlands. Historian of emigration, Dr Marjory Harper, contrasts the tragic, romantic view of Highland emigration with the more pragmatic, positive view of the emigration of masses of urban workers, farmers and fishermen from the Lowlands, with the aid of further quotations from emigrant letters.

Scenes 16-22: Scots in the USA

The action switches to Tartan Day festivities in Washington DC - 6 April, the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath and a celebration of the Scots contribution to the USA. The Scots Detective is then seen surfing the Net and consulting the website of the USA Bureau of the Census (http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ancestry/table) which lists 68 peoples making up the population of the USA today. He finds that the Scots, at over 3 million, are the tenth biggest ethnic group, and the Scots-Irish from Ulster, at over 4 million, the eighth biggest. He also finds that American Scots have the best educational qualifications and the highest household incomes of the top ten founding peoples, emphasising the relative success of Scots emigrants and their descendants.

We hear from Scots Americans celebrating Tartan Day and talk to expert witness Alison Duncan, one of the event's organisers.

Scene 23: Impact on Native Peoples

The Scots' success stories are contrasted with the fate of the native peoples in the lands settled by Scots and other Europeans. Professor Tom Devine points out the irony of Highlanders cleared from Scotland to make way for sheep, themselves introducing sheep into lands taken from Aborigines and Maoris. The Scots' role in this process is weighed up. Were they especially ruthless?

Scenes 24-28: Between the Wars

A newsreel of the emigrant ship Marloch leaving the Hebrides for Canada in 1924 is used to illustrate the continuing large-scale emigration in the 1920s - a result of the post-war decline of Scotland's traditional industries. Dr Marjory Harper analyses the types of emigrants, their destinations, and the British government's economic and imperial motives for assisting them. Between 1922 and 1936 over 400,000 people were assisted to leave Britain by the Empire Settlement Act.

Scene 29: From Scotland to Canada and Back

The programme returns to Iain MacPherson on Skye, brought up on the Alberta prairie among children of 1920s emigrants from Scotland. He considers the fate of those emigrants and their children and enjoys the irony of the fact that he has returned from Canada to teach in a Gaelic college close to the place which his Gaelic-speaking great-grandfather left in 1840 for a new life across the Atlantic.