Harry Potter star Ian Hart is playing a Professor again, this time in Shetland, but he says the world created in the BBC series is more "real" than the Potter World.
Hart will forever be remembered by Potter fans for playing Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Now, he's playing a Professor again, but this time it's as Oxford University Professor of Mathematics, Euan Rossi, in Shetland season 9.
Comparing Shetland and Harry Potter, Ian says: "They’re very different things aren't they? Very different indeed. It’s not the simplistic thing of fantasy versus reality. It’s more than that. There’s a certain heightened, stylistic space that the Potter World occupies whereas Shetland is far more real.
"This is a series which feels so grounded, so much part of that landscape and that life, that it kind of grounds everything else that goes along with it.
"Essentially all stories when you take them out of their context are just far-fetched nonsense but by grounding it the way they do in the location of Shetland, you accept that it represents reality far more than a magician.
"Oddly enough, statistically speaking, Shetland has the lowest crime rate of anywhere in the whole of the United Kingdom and yet, you buy it straight away that these things can happen there.”
Professor Quirrell was famously a baddie in Harry Potter and might Ian’s character Euan in Shetland be a villain? His former student, Annie Bett, a friend of Tosh (Alison O'Donnell), goes missing and Calder (Ashley Jensen) becomes very suspicious of him.
Ian says: "With Calder, it's a game. What someone might suspect and what someone can prove are two very different things and Rossi is bright enough to understand the difference. By the very nature of what Calder does for a living, she's suspicious of Rossi. She'd be a very poor police officer if she wasn't suspicious! Rossi is familiar with the world of police investigations — he knows what they're about. He knows that, provided you don't give too much information away, it only remains a suspicion."
Despite his character being very serious, Ian had a great time on set, saying: "What’s the point in going to work if you're not going to have a laugh? It's the human condition to want to enjoy the company of others. The people on that show are all absolutely lovely, every last one of them from the props department, art department, sound, make-up…everyone.
"I worked with Ashley briefly and fleetingly on a film called A Cock and Bull Story some time ago. Both her and Alison were absolutely lovely to work with, kind and supportive and just lovely people to be around."
Shetland season 9 will begin on BBC One on Wednesday, November 6 at 9 pm. We don't have a US release date yet.
