Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Douglas Henshall, Alison O’ Donnell, Bill Paterson, Anthony Howell, David Annen, Erin Armstrong, Leigh Biagi, David Ireland, John Lynch, Lorne MacFadyen, Michael Nardone, Stewart Porter, Keith Ramsey, Steven Robertson, Annie Louise Ross, Paksie Vernon, Susan Vidler.

The question hanging on the lips of the residents of Fair Isle was just how long can it take to find a killer on an island? It all boils down to a matter of scale for D.I. Jimmy Perez as he is bought back to his home island to find the murderer of noted scientist Anna Blake and the confrontation of ghosts from his past that may have been better left to haunt the lonely isles alone.

For those that inhabit the group of islands that jut out of the North Sea like a rocky temple in ancient Rome surrounding by the sin of a million citizens, Shetland and its composite atolls and landmasses, trust is a very big part of their life and if one person and their dark secrets get in the way of the symbiotic relationship between community and island home then it is a more dangerous place to be in than stuck in the wide open space of the British countryside or within the unnatural man made confines of a city walls.

For Jimmy Perez, played by Douglas Henshall, the cell of one’s own making is never truly escaped for long, whether through design or accident, eventually the prison must be revisited and whilst the carefree days in which youthful isolation allows many a boyish transgression may be looked upon with a certain smile of wistful indulgence, the torture upon the Detective’s face was all too palpable as he almost fights the understandable urge to get the investigation done as quickly as and painlessly as possible rather than spend another hour with his own ghosts.

Shetland has been one of those series for which the crime novel and film/television adaptation were made for. A great cast, enhanced in this particular episode by the appearance of Anthony Howell as Peter Latimer, the superb John Lynch as Frank Blake and the exceptional Bill Paterson as Jimmy Perez’s father. A programme in which typifies the loneliness felt by many a good police officer and the rugged terrain of a landscape at odds with itself. A notable addition to the good many detective programmes that British television has become noted for.

Ian D. Hall