Series 2 of Shetland beefs up the storytelling and successfully sets an increasingly Nordic tone
“There’s a lot of dead folk in the world”
Having dipped their toe successfully into the icy Atlantic Ocean with the first season of a single story over two episodes, the BBC commissioned a second series of Shetland which was expanded to three two-part stories, each based on one of Ann Cleeves’ novels – Raven Black, Dead Water, and Blue Lightning to be precise. It’s an effective choice which builds out the world of DI Jimmy Pérez and his young investigative team as murder strikes with quite the regularity for such a small geographical space….
I hadn’t quite clocked this from the first series but Shetland shows more aspirational hints of Scandi-noir than it does of replicating Midsomer-style cosy crime. The chunky knits might yet still to flourish in large numbers but the wild and windswept terrain with rural isolation to the fore and an dark, moody, even Gothic bent to the storytelling keeps things in eerily gripping. From spiky teenagers dredging up secrets from the past, to journalists who used to live on the islands digging up, well, secrets from the past, to bird scientists with their own, you’ve guessed it, secrets from the past, there’s definitely consistency here.
Add in Pérez’s close connections – the journalist is a former best friend, the birdwatchers are on the island of his childhood home where his parents still live – and you begin to wonder how many more times he can be so closely linked to the cases. Plus two of the three heavily feature an elderly reclusive bearded man (it’s a miracle we get some teenage gays in the third) and so the need to diversify somehow in the future is definitely there. But in and of themselves, these are some highly watchable stories.
I’m loving the gentle chemistry between Douglas Henshall’s Pérez and his juniors, Alison O’Donnell’s Tosh and Steven Robertson’s Sandy, as they try and execute modern policing in an environment that doesn’t always allow it (the weather plays a great role in several episode). And with its feet now more established, a good level of guest cast livens up each case – Brian Cox as one of the hermity men, Nina Sosanya’s flirty visiting forensic tech and John Lynch’s grieving father all stand out here, as does Bill Paterson as Pérez senior who I hope we get to see more of.
