Scots is heard on screen in film, television and short-form video, and the first feature-length talking picture may have been made in Scots.

The Doric Film Festival, founded in 2019 and supported by the Scottish Government, screens five-minute films in North East Scots by individuals, community groups and schools. Mark Stirton's One Day Removals (2008), set in Aberdeen, was the first full-length feature film made entirely in Doric. Feature films that use Scots dialogue include Trainspotting (1996) and T2 Trainspotting (2017), Ratcatcher (1999), My Name is Joe (1998), Sweet Sixteen (2002), Red Road (2006), The Angels' Share (2012) and Schemers (2013).

On television, comedy featuring Scots speakers included Stanley Baxter's Parliamo Glasgow sketches in the 1960s and has continued to be popular, shows include: Rab C Nesbitt, Chewin' the Fat, Still Game and Burnistoun.

BBC Scotland has produced TV drama series with Scots speakers including the soap River City (2002 to 2026) and is currently adapting Graeme Armstrong's novel The Young Team, featuring west central Scots dialects, as a six-part drama.

History of Scots in broadcasting

Graham Moffat's Till the Bells Ring, a comedy of Glasgow family life with dialogue throughout in what Moffat called "Lowland braid Scots", premiered at Poole's Synod Hall in Edinburgh on 11 October 1926, a year before The Jazz Singer. Research by the film historian Mark David Jacobs, published in 2026, suggests it may be the first feature-length talking picture.

On radio, the BBC Scottish Home Service broadcast The McFlannels (1939), a weekly drama about a Glasgow family.

From the 70's onwards there were a growing number of films and TV series using Scots including: Sunset Song (BBC, 1971), Peter McDougall's Just Your Luck (1972), and John Byrne's Tutti Frutti (1987) and Your Cheatin' Heart (1990). Comedy using Scots.