Something to watch tonight: Monday 17 November

Shetland (2014-2024)

I whakapapa back to Shetland and have some­thing of an affin­ity for that bleak and windswept landscape.

Crime writer Ann Cleeves set sev­er­al mys­ter­ies in Shetland and ini­tially they were the source mater­i­al for the BBC series, but it has since taken on a life of its own.

I wrote a brief appre­ci­ation of Shetland — the show — for RNZ back when stream­er AMC+ launched a loc­al ver­sion of its AcornTV imprint in March last year:

AcornTV’s par­ent cor­por­a­tion is also a major share­hold­er in the com­pany that owns the Agatha Christie estate, so detect­ive stor­ies and who­dun­nits are very much part of their DNA.

As a proud des­cend­ant of the Shetland islands, I was always curi­ous about the long-running crime drama set in that loc­ale and, thanks to Acorn, I can watch all eight seasons.

The first sea­son – a kind of pilot, I sup­pose – was really a two-part TV movie, based on the nov­el Red Bones by Ann Cleeves. An eld­erly woman is killed with a shot­gun on one of the remote islands and detect­ive Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall) takes the short ferry ride from Lerwick to invest­ig­ate. He uncov­ers a fam­ily feud going all the way back to World War II and that story sets the tone for a well plot­ted and easy to watch show with an excel­lent sense of place. Although, I was dis­ap­poin­ted to dis­cov­er that much of the show is filmed on the main­land and they only go to Shetland for import­ant exter­i­ors and atmospherics.

Henshall is an appeal­ing lead as Perez, a recent wid­ower with a teen­age daugh­ter and a pater­nal­ism for his team that warms the heart. He left the series after sea­son sev­en and the most recent sea­son – broad­cast in the UK at the end of last year – now stars the great Ashley Jensen (Extras).

Shetland is one of the most pop­u­lar shows on AcornTV and its easy to see why. With 44 epis­odes in the can, it rep­res­ents great value for your stream­ing dollar.

Also men­tioned in that art­icle: Robbie Coltrane and Julie Walters in the plucked-from-the-headlines, National Treasure, and the excel­lent Australian polit­ic­al drama series Total Control.

Further listening

Last Friday night on RNZ Nights with Emile Donovan we had a free-ranging chat that included the new Spinal Tap sequel, The End Continues (in cinemas), an excel­lent indie drama out of this year’s Sundance, East of Wall (rent­al from AroVision), and the truly hor­rendous van­ity pro­ject from the Irish dan­cer Michael Flatley, Blackbird (YouTube).

Where to watch Shetland

Aotearoa: S1‑7 Streaming on ThreeNow (free with ads), S1‑9 stream­ing on AMC+

Australia, Canada, USA: Streaming on Britbox

Ireland, India: Not cur­rently available

UK: S1-10 BBC iPlayer (free with a TV license)