Shetland Series 9 Episode 1 Review: Ruth and Tosh Are the Detective Duo We’ve Waited For

Warning: this review contains spoilers for Shetland SERIES 9, episode 1. 

Draught rattling under your door? Ice on the inside of your window? Blame the return of Shetland, the coldest-looking show on television and the only detective drama that makes you want to tie a chunky knitted scarf around your TV set, hand it a steaming cup of leek and potato soup, and rub its chilly remote between your two hands. 

DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen) is back on the isles. After laying some family demons and an ex-boyfriend to rest last series (RIP Cal Innes), Ruth returned to London, realised that without the chapped lips and windburnt face, she’d lost her unique selling point as a TV detective, and so scooted home. On Shetland, Ruth has her vicar brother, a kindly set of police colleagues, a new house, and a shotgun pointing directly at her.

That’s the neat opening scene for Shetland series nine. The chatty monologue Ruth delivers to get us up to speed is being spoken to Malcolm Kidd (Stewart Campbell), a disturbed young islander who’s just killed his brother Andrew with a shotgun. Malcolm may kill Ruth too, except that then the BBC would have to replace Shetland’s second lead character in as many series, so we’re safe to assume that he won’t.

He doesn’t – phew. Ruth makes it out of episode one alive, but the same can’t be said for accountant Annie Bett, who signed her own TV-land death warrant when she made an appointment to tell Tosh (Alison O’Donnell) Something of Vital Importance the next day instead of while she was standing conveniently in front of her. By the next day, Annie was of course discovered dead, and her poor boy Noah was found splattered with her blood, wandering the moors, and too traumatised to speak.  

Who killed Annie Bett? Options currently include: 1) her soon-to-be-ex-husband Ian – a property developer struggling to cope with the end of their marriage, 2) her former university maths professor Euan Rossi, played by Ian Hart in a wig, 3) a dead Frenchman named Antoine Bergen, who also appears to be connected with the Kidd brothers’ murder, 4) one of the Harris men, a family of mussel farmers with whom Annie and Noah were staying. And for maximum shock value, perhaps we should add little Noah himself as a potential suspect. It’s always the quiet ones.  

Annie’s husband Ian is also missing by the end of episode one, but as a potential wife-murderer, viewer sympathy is currently limited. Also – Tosh doesn’t like him, and as our emotional windvane and leader in all things, that means we don’t like him either. 

DI Tosh, I should say, as our girl’s been promoted. That makes her and Ruthie Calder a proper double-act now. Two DIs, no waiting. They complement each other: one acts stony but weeps the second she’s alone, the other seems butter-soft but has a core of steel. They both remind me of the kind of PTA mum you send in when a supplier’s let down the school fete, and who comes back with everything fixed, a year’s free generator hire, and a don’t-ask look in her eye. You wouldn’t mess.

Their chemistry still has a way to go to match the familial warmth between Tosh and Douglas Henshall’s Jimmy Perez but give it time. There’s something about those two women driving through an austerely beautiful Scottish backdrop solving violent murders that says comfort to me. 

This whole series says comfort, which is why it’s currently on its ninth series. The knitwear, the accents, the weekly countdown to station stalwart Billy (Lewis Howden) putting the kettle on, or and Tosh radioing for GP Cora to be sent to whichever remote croft the latest corpse has been found in… It’s all reassuring, murders notwithstanding. When Ruth broke through her emotional armour to tell little Noah that “it’s going to be alright, wee man,” I believed her. 

Shetland series 9 continues on Wednesday November 13 at 9pm on BBC One. 

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