Bodies pile up but there is STILL life in Shetland
Shetland BBC1, Wednesday Whale With Steve Backshall Sky Nature, Tuesday/on demand I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out O f Here! Virgin One/UTV, all week
There’s always a danger when the lead actor in a long-running series decides to depart for pastures new, so when Douglas Henshall announced he was leaving BBC1’s crime drama Shetland to spend more time with his family, it was hard to imagine the show without his morose Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez. In Perez’s place, we got the equally complex DI Ruth Calder, played by Ashley Jensen. Calder is a Shetland native now working with the Met Police in London and who has to return to the islands on the trail of a missing young woman, Ellen Quinn, who has stolen £500,000 from a drug cartel.
Hot on Ellen’s heels are two hitmen sent to retrieve the cash, but things go horribly wrong when one of them dies after shooting himself during a tussle in the back seat of a car. Soon, though, Ellen herself is found dead, strangled and abandoned in the ruins of a remote church. So who did kill her – and why?
As always, Shetland thrives on multiple layers of plot. I have no idea how the people who live there feel about the series, but there really are very few redeeming features about almost everyone in the show, and this series took us to darker places than ever before.
While Jensen seamlessly blended in, the real star this year was Alison O’Donnell as acting DI Alison ‘Tosh’ McIntosh. Tosh was a supporting character in all seven previous series, and finally getting to take centre stage in the eighth, gave it a strong emotional core. She at least has empathy, and even sympathy, for the antagonists, no matter how evil their deeds, and she is the moral fulcrum around which everything else operates.
Shetland always has one great trick up its sleeve – diversion. A large cast of characters populates multiple sub-plots, and any one of them could be the killer. I confess that in this series (no spoilers), the killer was someone I never even once suspected, and for a reason that never occurred to me, which always is the hallmark of a brilliantly twisty drama.
I know many who think the show has lost something along with Perez, but when you have a strong replacement character and a brilliant supporting cast (including Phyllis Logan, Downton Abbey’s Mrs Hughes, effing and blinding away and having the time of her life as an embittered family matriarch, and Wild At Heart’s Dawn Steele as her daughter), then it’s easy to breathe new life into the show.
Th final scene was ambiguous, and it wasn’t clear if Calder would look to permanently join the force on the islands, but she made such an impact, I certainly hope she does.
The most startling image of the week came in Sky Nature’s Whale With Steve Backshall. The presenter has proved himself fearless on many occasions before, but free diving alongside a whale offered a stunning perspective of the size of the world’s largest mammal when compared to a human. The encounter happened just off the Azores in mid-Atlantic, and Backshall did it without breathing apparatus because the bubbles can attract unwanted attention. Ever since I was a child, the Biblical story of Jonah always has terrified me, and while Backshall never was in any danger of being swallowed whole, that did little to quell my anxiety. Like so many such shows, new filming techniques, including the use of drones, have brought stunningly vivid images to our screens. The footage of a pod of Risso’s dolphins, their skin marked by ridges incurred during fights, was serene and incredibly calming, but so too were the locations, including the Azores, Tahiti, Mauritius, the Bahamas and even Wales. After a stressful day, spending time above and below the waves with Backshall and watching the majesty of the creatures who inhabit the deep is not just a nature show. It feels like therapy.
I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! concludes tonight on Virgin Media One and UTV. It hasn’t been a vintage series, because there has actually been very little in the way of conflict, unless you include TV chef Fred Sirieix’s disdain for the cooking skills of This Morning presenter Josie Gibson, and boxer Tony Bellew’s open criticism of failed politician Nigel Farage and the Brexit he promoted.
The breakout star has been Sam Thompson, who apparently became famous in Made In Chelsea, a reality show I have gladly avoided for 10 years. Thompson is like a puppy, full of energy, and anxious – far too anxious – to please all around him. As someone said on Twitter/X, he has such a positive outlook on life, if he was being waterboarded and having his fingernails pulled out one by one, he’d profess delight at having a hair wash and a manicure.
He sees childlike wonder in everything, not least in Thursday night’s Bushtucker Trial when, as secret agent ‘Murph’, he had to descend into a baddie’s lair to retrieve six stars, and emerged triumphant in a full body roll, before thanking presenters Any and Dec for having him on the show in the first place. There are many previous contestants, I imagine, who happily would treat the pair to the same indignities foisted on them.
I’m A Celeb always has been my favourite reality show, because it pricks the pomposities of the often Z-list stars who enter the jungle. This year’s cast all seemed to be fairly decent people, with the exception of Farage, still trying to justify the greatest act of national self-harm in the modern era. His presence highlighted yet again the danger of having politicians on these shows, allowing them to present a persona that masks their real intent. I found him oily and manipulative but, sadly, there are millions who didn’t.
Nonetheless, I’m A Celeb has been fun, and the image of Thompson and Gibson covered in gunge and feathers alone has made it all worthwhile. I laughed like a drain.