Review by C.J. Bunce
The best British police procedural series of the past decade is back on top. It’s the eighth season of Shetland, and writing continuity and a cast change-up breathed some new life into the show. The BBC One series saw stars Douglas Henshall and Mark Bonnar leaving at the end of last season, and the prospect of a series without them seemed somewhat odd. But it turns out the three supporting characters, a new co-lead, the familiar backdrop of the northern country, along with more strong storytelling is enough to forge ahead to a ninth season, although the series hasn’t yet been renewed. So it could be the arrival of the Season 8 finale this week is actually the series finale. All of Season 8 is streaming now on BritBox via Prime Video.
The best part of the season found former lead DC Jimmy Perez’s trusty right arm Alison “Tosh” MacIntosh (Alison O’Donnell) as the “acting” DC in charge of the Shetland unit. Her character is written the same as before–the same detective work, the same drudgery of the job, and a little bit less of the pull of home life. She takes what could have been her chief entanglement–a new detective from Edinburgh–all in stride and makes the partnership work for her and the show. That new detective is Ashley Jensen’s DI Ruth Calder, a native to Shetland who moved away to the big city and never wanted or expected to come back to the rural life. When her boss learns the mob is on the trail of a young woman who took money from them and headed to Shetland, she’s assigned the job of going home. It provides some good drama to set up future season plots–if the series gets that far. Despite their different styles O’Donnell and Calder have rapport and chemistry, at times a fun crimefighting duo.
Among the guest stars of the season are two long-time favorite Scotland actors: Jamie Sives (Crime, Guilt, Annika, Doctor Who) as Calder’s old flame, and Dawn Steele (Case Histories, Monarch of the Glen, Sea of Souls) as the mother of the victim. But the backbone of the show is still O’Donnell, with police staff DC Sandy Wilson, played by Steven Robertson (Luther, The Bay, Doctor Who, Ashes to Ashes), Lewis Howden (Annika, Monarch of the Glen) as Sgt. Billy McCabe, and Anne Kidd (Outlander, Monarch of the Glen) as coroner Cora McLean. New actors included Lorraine McIntosh, Phyllis Logan, Karl Collins, Barry O’Connor, Steven Miller, Tibu Fortes, Bamshad Abedi-Amin, Manjinder Virk, Kevan MacKenzie, Sandy Grierson, Gemma Laurie, and Maisie Seaton.
The series is now officially a departure from Ann Cleeves’ novels (see my review of the last Shetland novel here). This is probably going to be a good thing if the series keeps going, as the themes and plots had become repetitive and the uniqueness of the locale no longer enough to support the series without something more. Viewers who have watched the show over its decade on TV have been treated to a unique mix of crime, including human trafficking, murders, blackmail, dead bodies in the ocean, family skeletons in the closet, cheating hearts, and missing persons. This season’s crime was another murder, but a murder with lots of potential suspects, and lots of guilty parties–guilty of something if not the murder itself.
Paul Logue retook the lead writing role again for this season, bringing the necessary continuity of characterizations, with season six directors Andy Newbery and Giulia Gandini seamlessly taking over the directing duties. Beginning with Season 5, the show started getting as bleak as the grey Shetland horizon over the sea. With the new changes, the series is off to a thrilling re-start with a whodunnit full of interconnected families and lots of lies and liars to wade through.
What is behind the success of the series? Logue and the directors leaned into why the first seasons were a hit: a setting that is so remote and desolate without feeling “rural,” and the show’s ability to find unusual circumstances, interesting cultural events, and quirky but real characters we haven’t seen anywhere before in the police procedural genre. But we still want more.
Shetland succeeded at continuing without its former lead as other British series this year failed. Catch all eight seasons of Shetland now exclusively on BritBox in the U.S.
