Shetland is a mild, full-hearted police procedural – “like a cross between Wallander and Midsomer Murders”, Sarah Dempster wrote in the Guardian in 2013 – and set mainly on that Scottish archipelago – “permanently dark, plagued by murder and with residents who communicate only by glaring”, Filipa Jodelka wrote the year after. It is anchored, at least for the first seven seasons, by DI Jimmy Perez – “a TV copper of rare nuance”, Jack Seale wrote last year, “with no gimmick apart from the steady erosion of his will”. It could be said that over the last 10 years, this series has had more than its fair share of coverage on this site. Then again, it’s really good.
Perez is played by Douglas Henshall, in a determinedly consistent wardrobe of jeans, knitted jumper and peacoat (Barbour jacket on special occasions). He solves murders. These evolve from one-offs involving birdwatchers and inheritances in the early seasons to multi-episode conspiracies and corruption exposés with higher and higher stakes. Fishing is usually involved.
Shetland’s mainland is small and, notwithstanding rural life’s genuine tendencies to the gothic, extremely crime-ridden. In every case Perez and his loyal sidekicks – the stoic DS Alison “Tosh” McIntosh and the vaguely hopeless DC Sandy Wilson – inevitably cross swords with old flames, schoolmates, teachers, colleagues. No matter how resolutely solitary Perez keeps his life, he can’t stand apart from the tangles of his community. The toll of this weird mix of isolation and enmeshment registers mainly on his increasingly haggard, vulnerable face (“like a Scottish, tired Daniel Craig”, my boyfriend observes when I pressure him to watch.) But Perez rarely loses his cool, sticking, even in the most extreme circumstances, to measured pronouncements and piercing looks. “It’s a mild-off!” my boyfriend says several episodes in, as our man confers in a low burr with yet another person in a patterned knit.
GQ’s Gabriella Paiella has diagnosed the rise of what she calls “Prestige Dad TV”: “shows about no-nonsense older men – especially, but not limited to, dads – saving the day”, with a due hat-tip to Max Read’s theory of the 90s dad thriller (both fun to read). Shetland, if not exactly in this matrix, is somewhere in the neighbourhood: as if Gary Oldman spent an unreasonable amount of time watching who went in and out of the pub, or if Harrison Ford watched the ABC. The Australian public broadcaster’s deep commitment to BBC crime shows, not incidentally, has probably conditioned me from birth to like Shetland (and skewed my tastes irretrievably boomer – see also: Taggart, Line of Duty, anything with James Nesbitt).
The crime writer Tana French says the detective “is a symbol of authority and restoration of order”. Hillary Kelly, who quotes her in the Atlantic, reflects that detective or not, any good crime story “needs devotion”. Perez might be the most wholesomely devoted man on earth. “The world’s broken, Jimmy, and you can’t fix it,” a would-be admirer tells him; he is after all, in the words of one suspect, “just some guy, standing on a rock in the middle of the sea”. But while the body counts rise, and something in him crumbles, he keeps trying.
Shetland’s treatment of violence and social horror generally tends to the matter of fact – unflinching but understated. Ann Cleeves, who wrote the novels it’s based on (and also the books that inspired the similarly wholesome Vera series), acknowledges “the moral ambiguity [of] turning homicide into entertainment”. But she also highlights the show writers’ efforts to get a major character’s traumatic story arc right – which they do, as most times, with sensitivity and dignity.
I like the same things about Shetland most people do. The reproachfully wistful intro soothes some critical brainstem. The sweeping shots of the islands’ starkly beautiful, much-commented-on landscapes (“no place for the perpetrators to hide”, my dad points out) satiate my urge to move to a remote and foggy outcrop. The show has become a comfortable sort of furniture for my life – to joke about with my boyfriend (who started season six without me), push unprompted on strangers, sling family conversations over.
“Is that possibly murderous dad golly from monarch of the glen???” I text a sister, interrupting a far more serious conversation with absolutely no other context. “Yes!!!!” she replies immediately. My dad likes the refreshingly unheroic characters, the familial bond between the central cast, the thoughtful escapism of the contained setting. My mum likes Perez (who, in a storyline I refuse to spoil for myself, is gone by season eight). “He doesn’t judge people,” she muses, reflectively, over the phone. “He sees them but he doesn’t judge them.” That conversation spills into a philosophical text exchange about the meaning of a dedicated life and the limits of selflessness. I call the same sister, months later, to ask her about her favourite thing about the show. “How earnest it is,” she says. “They give so much gravity to everything.” She pauses – driving, as it happens, by a moody seascape. “Actually,” she says, “I think it’s just the accents.”
• Shetland is available to stream on Binge and BritBox in Australia and BBC iPlayer in the UK. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
