A new soap has been lathering up in Scotland and, two episodes in, it's already proving more popular with Scottish viewers than EastEnders. The most recent episode of The Scheme, a gritty fly-on-the-wall documentary series set in a poverty-stricken housing estate in Kilmarnock and shown on BBC Scotland, pulled in an extraordinary 520,000 viewers in total, according to the BBC – putting it on a par with that Scottish TV holy grail, live football. And, as word of the programme has spread beyond Scotland, The Scheme has become a UK-wide phenomenon: this week it is the fifth most-watched programme on iPlayer.

There hasn't been a Scottish programme that has caught the public imagination and fuelled tabloid headlines in this way since Rab C Nesbitt gave up the booze. Even Newsnight Scotland is debating its merits. Discussion mainly focuses on the question of whether the programme's portrayal of heroin addicts injecting, teenage criminals confessing and 16-year-old pregnant girls considering abortion should be lauded as an unusually honest reflection of modern life, or seen as exploitative "poverty porn".

It's hard to say just what has so appealed to viewers about the people of Onthank, Kilmarnock, who have now been dubbed "Scotland's Shameless" by the Sun. Some may be simply mesmerised by the shocking squalor and desperation which with these people live, perhaps having believed those Ken Loach movies to have been a dramatic exaggeration. Some online commentators claim to have fallen for some of the more likeable or hopeful participants, such as Marvin the former heroin addict and Kimberley the aspiring dancer. Some say they tune in for "the banter" and "unintentional comedy gold". But the show has also doubtless benefited from the immense controversy it has attracted in the Scottish media.