One of those shows I’ve always meant to get around to watching, I’m now starting Shetland at the beginning with Series 1
“We’ve got the sky and the sea”
Despite it being right up my avenue in terms of TV shows I would normally watch at the time, for some reason or other I never started Shetland. Clearly I had better things to do in 2013 but as the nights draw in and its ninth series has just started on BBC1, what better time to dive in at the beginning?! The property is based on crime novels by Ann Cleeves (also responsible for Vera, another show I need to get around to watching) and the first series – just two episodes long – is an adaptation by David Kane of Red Bones, set in the eponymous Scottish archipelago, the northernmost part of the UK.
It’s your standard crime procedural, with epic scenery and a thorough acknowledgement of the intimate nature of living in a place like this. Mima Wilson is the first victim of the show and her body is found by a policeman who happens to be her grandson. The case is investigated by DI Jimmy Pérez (a remarkably fresh-faced Douglas Henshall) whose forensic expert used to teach him at high school. One of his secondary suspects is the biological father of Pérez’s stepdaughter (his wife having passed away), etc etc. It will be interesting to see how this aspect plays out over the series to come but if Jersey, Midsomer, et al can be hotbeds of crime, why not Shetland too….
It’s an effective two-parter, rooted in tangled family connections and the pain of the past as we come to discover that the archaeological dig on Mima’s croft holds secrets of just as much modern history as ancient. A fascinating thread explores the Shetland Bus, a WWII special ops group working to help Norway which was under Nazi occupation, there’s inappropriate flirtations between professors and students, and generational trauma affecting rival families, all building to a climax which coincides with the Up Helly Aa fire festival which will severely disrupt the already limited police capacity.
On this evidence, Henshall makes for an appealing and emotive lead. Clearly he has emotional pain in his past but it isn’t overdone and there’s more focus on the amusing details of the trials of rural policing. Sergeants who are hungover (a great Alison O’Donnell), hugely unreliable mobile phone reception, mainland bosses looking over their shoulders. The guest cast is strong without being spectacular, featuring names such as Gemma Chan, Sophie Rundle and Geraldine Alexander and if I might have preferred that the key moment of revelation didn’t come from the guilty party mentioning a detail they shouldn’t have known, that’s probably because I watch too many crime shows! I’ll be watching one more from now on.
