Series / Shetland

"Do you still think this is the best place in the world to live?"

— Cassie

Shetland is a BBC British murder mystery set on the Shetland Isles in Scotland. The show follows the cases of the CID team of Lerwick, Shetland. From seasons 1-7 it is led by Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez (portrayed by Douglas Henshall), and as of season 8, by DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen).

The show is based on the books by Ann Cleeves, who also wrote the novels that the ITV series Vera is based on, with the first two series are based on her books. Series 1 is a two-parter based on her book Red Bones. Series 2 consists of three two-parter episodes based on the books Raven Black, Dead Water and Blue Lightning. From Series 3 onwards, the format was changed, so the mystery now unfolds over six episodes instead of two, and are completely original stories.

The CID team includes Detective Sergeant Alison 'Tosh' Macintosh (Alison O'Donnell), Detective Constable Sandy Wilson (Steven Robertson), Sergeant Billy McCabe (Lewis Howden), Procurator Fiscal Rhona Kelly (Julie Graham), and forensic examiner Cora McLean (Anne Kidd). While Perez was involved, the show often also featured Perez's daughter Cassie Perez (Erin Armstrong) and her biological father Duncan Hunter (Mark Bonnar).

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Shetland provides examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion: The first two series' were based on the books by Ann Cleeves. Season 3 onwards are completely original stories.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sally Henry who is revealed to have murdered her best friend in the Season 2 two parter “Black Raven.”
• Bittersweet Ending: Many of the cases end like this.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: McCall threatens Perez with going after his family if he doesn't stop sniffing around trying to pin Michael Thompson's murder on him.
• Blood from Every Orifice: Eammon Gauldie in Season 6 comes to a particularly nasty end with somebody deliberately lowers the pressure in the decompression chamber he's in. This causes blood to come out of his ears and nose as blood vessels burst, before he finally succumbs, and dies.
• Body of the Week: It is a murder mystery show so this is to be expected.
• Break the Cutie: Tosh after she is sexually assaulted in Season 3.
• British Brevity: The first "season'" has only two episodes (a single two-parter), while subsequent seasons have six. Season two is three two-parters, while the rest of the seasons involve complete season arcs.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Ellen in season 8 was the result of this.
• Canon Foreigner: Tosh is not in the books.
• Car Fu: In the first episode of Season 6, soon to be murder victim Alex Galbraith is rammed off the road by Kate Kilmuir, who was upset about him getting her sister's murderer released from prison on compassionate grounds. In episode two, Sandy get's deliberately knocked out by a 4x4 that a drug dealer is driving because he doesn't want the police talking to one of his customer's about Alex's murder, in case she starts talking about where she get's her pills from instead.
• Close-Knit Community: This being the remote islands of Shetland, it's no wonder.
  • In the very first episode, the murder victim is Sandy's Grandmother.
  • In Seasons 1 and 2, Tosh frequently runs into into Drew, her ex, almost a Running Gag.
  • In Season 4, Perez's associate and his daughter's biological father, Duncan becomes a murder suspect.
    DI Cole: You're too close to this. It's personal.
    Jimmy: it's Shetland. Everything is personal.
  • In Season 4, Sandy gets romantically involved with a victim's sister, which resurfaces in Season 6.
  • In Season 6, Duncan ends up being involved with a convicted murderer.
  • In Season 7, one of Tosh's boyfriend's exes is involved in the case.
• Color Wash: Everything on Shetland seems to be permanently drenched in grey. Even on sunny days.
• Creepy Loner Girl: Clarna, in season 7. Her only friend appears to be Abbie Cairns. She introduces herself to the team by eerily telling them "You know he's dead, right?" referring to the missing person they're investigating, and she ropes Abbie into doing (innocent) occultish rituals.
• Date Rape: Tosh, in season 3, as a message to Jimmy to stop investigating McCall.
• Dead Man's Chest: At the end of the first episode of season 7, a body in a suitcase is fished out of the sea, but it turns out not to be Connor Cairns, the missing teenager the police have been searching for. Who this body is and how it ties in to Connor's disappearance is a major subplot of the season.
• Deadpan Snarker: When a white supremacist complains to Jimmy about the immigrants "polluting" the white Northern European gene pool, he asks Jimmy if he isn't worried about the same thing. Jimmy points out his own last name — Perez — as being distinctly not Northern European.
• Destroy the Evidence: In season 6, Jimmy tells Duncan to take the mug used to deliver the overdose that (voluntarily) killed Donna Killick to the sink. After Duncan protests, Jimmy explains it's so that there is a reason — other than delivering Donna the drugs — that Duncan's fingerprints are on the mug, as assisted suicide is illegal in the UK. In the end, it doesn't matter as Duncan confesses, and Jimmy is implicated anyway.
• Driven to Suicide: Calum Dunwoody does this in the police cells in Season 5, leading to Sandy being investigated, and eventually suspended, over it. However, since Sandy is back at work in Season 6, with no mention about it, it appears that nothing came of the investigation into it.
• False Confession: Fraser Creggan confesses to the murder of Alex Galbraith in Season 6 in an attempt to protect his Shell-Shocked Veteran father. Jimmy knows what he’s doing, so doesn’t believe him, and let’s him go. However, it soon leads to tragedy when some friends of the Victim of the Week’s daughter start to attack the house, believing him guilty, and his father accidentally shoots him dead when it brings on a PTSD flashback to his time in Iraq.
• Framing the Guilty Party: How Drew justifies having framed Malone for Lizzie Kilmuir's murder in Season 4: Malone had the signs of having a dangerously unbalanced personality and it would only be a matter of time until he really did hurt someone.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Calvin Sarwar. Arthur McCall's lawyer. He works around his boss to put hit on people among other things.
• Happily Adopted: A variation as Cassie is not Jimmy's biological daughter but his step-daughter and even after her mother dies she considers him her dad. Highlighted more as her biological dad lives on the same island but she lives with Jimmy the majority of the time.
• Hard Head: In season 6 Sandy gets knocked out by a drug dealer driving a 4x4 at him, and the end of the that episode's camera pans out with him lying on the ground with blood pouring from his head. Although he regains consciousness, and ends up in hospital, but he’s back at work a few hours later, seemingly completely fine, with not even a headache or a dressing for that head wound.
• Human Traffickers: The main plotline of Season 5.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Tosh works out that Norwegian Detective Lars has been on Shetland before, though he had no reason to be, when he tells her to take a detour to avoid some since completed roadworks in Season 4. The roadworks had only been there briefly and he wouldn't have known about them if he hadn't been on the island very recently before. He turns out to have been the one who attacked Jo Halley, and who witnessed Sally McColl being with Duncan on the night of her murder. Then it turns out he had could be a suspect to Sally’s murder because she had evidence that he was part of a Neo Nazi group.
  • In season 6, Niven Guthrie speaks at a press conference lamenting the "mob" that attacked the Creggans' house. Logan Creggan later confronts Niven pointing out that no one had said it was a mob.
• Innocently Insensitive : Jimmy’s Dad in Season 6. He’s suffering from dementia so ends up forgetting a lot of important things, like the fact that his wife has died, or that Jimmy’s wife is also dead, and ends up accidentally saying some hurtful things.
• Jerkass: Donna Killick. In Season 4 it was her who killed Lizzie Kilmuir, and let Thomas Malone not only take the blame, but also serve 23 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. She is finally caught and jailed. However in Season 6 she is released from prison on compassionate grounds as she is dying from cancer. She then decides to return to Shetland to die, knowing all well that this will cause the family and friends of Lizzie who still live there to be upset, and reopen old wounds. She then spends the whole time refusing to take any responsibility for her actions, accuses Jimmy of lying during her trial, and tells Duncan it was his fault that Lizzie died. They call her out on her on this, telling her that she didn't have to murder Lizzie, but she remains unrepentant about it all. She ends up manipulating Duncan into helping her commit suicide, which is illegal in the UK, and counts as murder, having first sent a statement to her lawyer (which she got Duncan to post, no less!) accusing Duncan and Jimmy of plotting to kill her.
• Last-Name Basis: A variation- Alison McIntosh is known simply as "Tosh".
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Zigzagged. Tosh finds out that Sandy has leaked crime scene photos. She confronts him about this privately, and urges him to come clean about it. Later, when they find the gumption to speak up about it, the awkward situation causes Tosh to tell them to forget it.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Jimmy and Duncan. Although sometimes it feels more like Amicably Divorced as the two have a custody agreement over Duncan's daughter (Cassie) and Jimmy's step-daughter. In season 3, Duncan gets kicked out of his home and crashes at Jimmy's. This happens again in season 5, and he still seems to be living there in season 6. Name Checked in Season 2 when during a dispute over decisions about (then minor) Cassie, Duncan jokes, "I think I want a divorce!"
• Loners Are Freaks: Lowrie in season 3. He's just a socially awkward guy that doesn't know how to interact with other people and loves to do arts and crafts revolving dead animals.
• The Lost Lenore: Jimmy's late wife, Fran (who died before the beginning of the series) is this to him.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: In season 6, the valve that slowly reduces the air pressure in a deep sea divers' decompression chamber is opened too far, causing dangerously rapid depressurization, and kills Eammon Gauldie, who was a potential witness to the murder of Alex Galbraith. Jimmy is immediately suspicious, despite the fact the marine police are happy to write it off as an accident. Somewhat played with as it is suggested that it wasn't supposed to kill him, but only scare him, with the assumption that he would be able to access a backup valve on the inside to stop the depressurization.
• Mama Bear: Season 5 gave us Olivia Lennox, who's one woman mission to get her daughter back from the human traffickers caused all sorts of havoc on the islands, and a headache for Perez and the team. After all that, her daughter then decides she going back to Nigeria to live and not stay in Britain with her.
• Manipulative Bastard: Donna Killick, especially in Season 6 when she wheedles and cajoles Duncan into helping her die, all the while planning to posthumously declare she has no wish to die and was likely killed by Duncan with Jimmy's help. To add insult to injury, she tricks Duncan into mailing the letter that will be later used against him.
• May–December Romance: Catherine and Sally both have these in the first two episodes of season 2.
  • Donna Killick is at least middle-aged, but is noticeably younger than her lover, Drew Maccoll.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Thomas Malone spent 23 years in jail for the murder of Lizzie Kilmuir - a murder he didn't commit, as he was framed for it by the then Detective Inspector Drew McColl. When he is finally freed, and cleared of the crime, he dies of a heart attack.
• Missing Mom: Cassie's mum died before the series began.
• Monochrome Casting: Season 1. Season 2 fixes this with Willow Reeves played by Nina Sosanya. Season 3 has Asha Israni played by Archie Panjabi. Seasons 6 and 7 have Maggie Kean played by Anneika Rose, as well as the Syrian Nassan family. Season 7 also has Carol-Anne Mané.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sally Henry after admitting to murdering her best friend. "I miss her. I miss her."
• Mystery of the Week: Technically, it's a mystery of the fortnight as each mystery lasts two episodes. From Season 3, it became the mystery over six episodes instead.
• Never One Murder: Averted in the first couple of seasons, however the bodies really started to pile up from Season 3 onwards, to the point where Shetland could rival Midsomer as the deadliest place to live in Britain.
• Nordic Noir: Has many of the hallmarks, from characterisation to themes to atmospherics. And it only makes sense, Shetland being the most Nordic place in Britain (they have Viking festivals! Their flag is a Nordic Cross! The very word "Shetland" is Norse!)
• "Not Illegal" Justification: In "Raven Black", it's revealed that Alan Isbister (who appears to be in his 30s) has been sleeping with Sally Henry, a teenage girl. When the police interrupt them, Alan protests that as Sally consented and is 16 (the legal age of consent in Scotland) he hasn't done anything wrong; while he hasn't broken the law, he's still treated with distaste for having sex with an obviously vulnerable girl young enough to be his daughter. It then turns out he's had sexual contact with girls even younger than Sally, which is definitely illegal.
• Oddly Small Organisation: Apparently Shetland only has three detectives, and a handful of uniformed cops, to investigate every crime on an archipelago who’s murder rate is up there with Cabot Cove. Initially 2, actually, as Sandy is promoted from PC to DC over the course of the series.
• Offing the Offspring: Drew McColl killed his daughter Sally in Season 4.
  • A tragic example in Season 6 when Logan Creggan accidentally shoots and kills his son Fraser, after an attack on their house by some local teenagers brings on a PTSD flashback to his time in Iraq.
  • In Season 8, Ellen was killed by her stepfather.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: Jimmy and Tosh respectively.
• One-Steve Limit: Drew, Tosh's Ex, and Drew McColl, Sally Henry and Sally McColl. However, none of these characters appeared in the same series’ as each other.
  • Season 6 managed to give us three Alexander’s; two of which worked in the police station. Thankfully, two of them went by variations of the name, so it wasn’t to confusing. One was Sandy, with the other’s being Victim of the Week Alex Galbraith and one of the uniformed copper’s who went by the full version of the name.
• Papa Wolf: Both Jimmy and Duncan try to steer Cassie away from Alan Killick to protect her, though for very different reasons. Jimmy because he didn't like him, and was investigating his family over a murder, and Duncan because he had just discovered that Alan was his son, making him Cassie's half brother, and he didn't want the relationship to take a romantic turn...
  • Averted with Drew Maccoll, who is revealed to have killed his own daughter in the season 4 finale.
• Police Are Useless: Averted. The protagonist is a Detective Inspector and good at his job. Everyone in the police force is shown to be at least competent if not very skilled at their job. Not counting Sandy's lapses.
• Prefers Proper Names: Crossing over into Affectionate Nickname, Billy the Desk Sergeant will insist on calling Sandy by his full name of Alexander. He had to stop this in season 6 when another cop called Alexander started working at the police station.
• Scenery Porn: Despite the Color Wash, Shetland still looks pretty spectacular at times.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In Season 7, Jimmy lets Lloyd out of the station's holding cell (and gives him subtle hints on how to flee the country) despite being required to hold him for the Home Office. He knows full well that this will end his career, but doesn't care, because it is the just thing to do, as despite diplomatic assurances, Lloyd will likely face the death penalty in the US for a crime Jimmy believes he was framed for.
• Sequel Hook: At the end of season 6, we get two "hooks" for Season 7: Tosh discovers she's pregnant, and Perez is arrested for attempting to cover up Duncan's crime. Three, if you include the fact that the subplot about Sandy leaking of police photos to the press remains unresolved.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Logan Creggan in Season 6, which leads to tragedy when he accidentally shoots his son dead during a PTSD attack after some local kids attack their house.
• Shipping Torpedo: Sandy seems less than impressed when Tosh says she is considering getting back together with her ex-boyfriend Drew.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Season 4 ends with Thomas Malone exonerated of the murder he spent 23 years in prison for and the one committed after he was released. Just after he finds out he's been cleared and he can finally move on with his life, he dies of a heart attack.
• Story Arc: Season 3 changes the dynamic from being a mystery of the week to a serial over the length of 6 episodes.
• Team Pet: The police station has a dog.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The dog disappears from season 3 onwards and is never brought up.
• Techno Wizard: Donnie, Tosh's boyfriend in Season 6 is, in her own words: "Half man, half laptop." He get's pressed into action as an unofficial police computer expert, as the team can't wait a couple of weeks for someone on the mainland to look into computer's that may have important information on them to the crimes they are currently investigating. He is also tasked by Jimmy into finding out who leaked the crime scene pictures of Lizzie Kilmuir to the press just as her murderer is released from jail, after Jimmy works out it was an "inside job". It was Sandy.
• Title Drop: Often. Justified as it is the name of the setting.
• The TV Show of the Book: Each two parter is based on a different Ann Cleeves book. From Season 3 onwards, the stories are completely original.
• The Starscream: Calvin Sarwar. Arthur McCall's lawyer. He's systematically working to unseat him as the head of the organization.
• Troubled, but Cute: Leanne, at first. Boy does it get worse.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Played with in-universe. In Season 6, Duncan gets in trouble for the assisted suicide of Donna Killick, which is equivalent to murder in UK law. But according to him at the beginning of Season 7, instead of being hated for being a murderer, he's hated for giving her an "easy way out."
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom / Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Leanne Randall, or rather Lena Gilborne, is a combination of both. The daughter of Asha Ishrani's first Witness Protection case. After her mother committed suicide following her inability to adapt to her new life, Leanna hated Asha and wanted to get back at her. When she recognized Asha many years later, she followed Michael, knowing that he was likely also in the witness protection program, so she tried to use Michael to lure her out. She trapped Robbie in a container trying to get Michael into trouble. Outted Michael to the people looking for him. Eventually this ends with a fiscal's reputation in ruins, her son accused of rape, a dirty lawyer killed in prison, a mob boss out scot free, several people dead or injured, and Tosh raped. Did she want to get to Asha? Yes. Did she intend to ruin a bunch of other people's lives in the process? No.
• Walk of Shame: When Tosh goes to arrest Donnie's ex Carol Anne, she waits specifically until their mutual acquaintance (Donnie) is there before doing it, despite having ample time beforehand, seemingly specifically so that said acquaintance can see it go down in front of him. (An uncharacteristically vindictive move for Tosh, in fact.)
• What Happened to the Mouse?: This happens quite a lot between seasons, though meanwhile other old plot devices recur logically.
  • At the end of Season 5, DS Sandy is suspended for accidentally leaving a suicidal suspect alone with a pen, which they use to kill themselves in their cell. At the start of Season 6, there is nary any mention of it (save for Tosh's offhand remark about "this time" for something Sandy does.)
  • Tosh's rape is a personal arc in Season 4, but after Season 4 it is never brought up or referenced in the show.
  • In season 7, Tosh experiences a traumatic event, which seems to cause them momentary periods of stupor, pain, incapacity, and even eventually an emotional breakdown... but by episode 5, she's suddenly completely fine.
  • In season 5, Jimmy agrees to finance Duncan's wine bar project. By season 6, Duncan is running the place, and a passing mention is made to it being Jimmy's money. By season 7, Cassie is running the wine bar, but no mention of Jimmy's financial backing — and with Duncan in prison and planning to never return to Shetland, it would effectively be Jimmy's wine bar. (Incidentally, Jimmy and Meg go on at least two dates to the wine bar, but Jimmy never mentions his involvement in it. It's not clear if she already knows about it.)
  • Inverted in Season 6 with the return of Donna Killick and the resurfacing of her crime and its victims from season 4, and between Seasons 6 and 7 with the carryover of Meg's character.
  • Also inverted with Perez's arrest and tribunal around Donna Killick's "suicide" at the end of Season 6, although it is quickly wrapped up in the first ten minutes of Season 7. (Meanwhile, Tosh has had a baby and moved in with Donnie, Cassie has taken over the wine bar and moved in with PC Alex, Jimmy's father has died. But, Procurator Fiscal Kean is still there, at least for two more episodes.
  • Zigzagged with Jimmy's tribunal outcome. Fiscal Kean congratulatorily declares it "the right decision," seemingly forgetting that she's the one that had Perez investigated in the first place.
• With a Foot on the Bus: At the end of series 3, Tosh says she's going to leave Shetland. She's still there at the start of Series 4, and it appears she's waiting for a suitable vacancy on the mainland. But it turns out she changed her mind.