Steve Martin salutes Paul Simon
Shetland – A Scottish mystery series that gets better with each passing season.
The mystery series Shetland can be found on the streaming service Britbox. Shetland is an archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands, and Norway.
An archipelago is an area that contains a chain or group of islands scattered in lakes, rivers, or the ocean. I had to look that up. It’s been a few years since I took Geography.
The show features Scottish actor Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez. In the show he is featured as a widower, having lost his wife some years before. Also featured are “Tosh”, Allison O’Donnel One of my favorite lines early in season one was when asked why she wore braces, she said “I want American teeth”.
You definitely need to watch this show with closed captioning. The Scottish accents are sometimes hard to understand, but are a joy to hear.
The series is filmed in Lerwick, the NorthLink ferry and the village of Wester Quarff, south of Lerwick. Some filming was on Fair Isle for series 2. The Hillswick wildlife sanctuary featured in series 4. The stark landscape adds to the beauty and character of the series.
I think the show gets better with each succeeding season, which consist of six episodes. The characters are memorable, and I found that I actually cared about them.
The Shetland series is a bestselling, critically-acclaimed series of crime novels by Ann Cleeves.