Shetland: Season Four - Episode One

Malone: 'You know, your daughter didna deserve this. But you did.'

If there was ever a perfect time to watch Shetland, it must surely be a cold February night, with the wind howling around the eaves, rain thrashing the latticed windows, and a gigantic bowl of porridge on your lap. I unashamedly love Shetland. Whether that's because it's so different from other UK detective dramas, or because I think the sun shines out of Ann Cleeves' bottom, who can say? What I do know is that Tuesday nights just got a whole lot murderier.

Real talk: Shetland is a bleak place. Even when the sun's out, the ambient light still feels several lumens short of regular daylight. The exterior shots seem deliberately gloomy: as if Lee Haven Jones purposefully sought out all the shaded nooks and crannies to create an added layer of foreboding. But there's an undeniable charm to the scenery: even if a significant chunk of the show is filmed on the mainland, rather than the island proper. You perhaps have to live in a remote community to truly understand how isolated things can feel, yet Shetland does a great job of conveying the sheer emptiness and desolation of the island. There's a faint whiff of Swedish detective noir about it, its landscape all muted blues, browns and greys.

The first surprise of the season is that Alison 'Tosh' MacIntosh is still around. After her rape last season, the last thing we heard was that she'd applied for a transfer to the mainland. So it was a surprise to see her still working as a detective, and a pleasure to learn that she'll likely be around all season. Assuming she doesn't get clocked by a JCB bucket halfway through and knocked into the sea, that is. Whether her threatening to leave was a creative decision (and it's hard to imagine how it could've been), or whether Alison O'Donnell simply had a change of heart, I neither know nor care. Tosh is one of the principle protagonists in a show with a small, intimate cast, and her compassionate, sometimes vulnerable presence is the perfect compliment to Jimmy Perez's world-weary candour.

Sadly, her withdrawing her transfer application was probably the only ray of muted sunshine in an otherwise grim episode. Sally McColl's dead, Cassie's relationship with whatsisface has gone tits up (I don't think they even mentioned his name throughout: instead referring to him as 'your boy'), Sandy's missus has hopped it with the kids, the local pizza looks virtually inedible, and a freshly exonerated Thomas Malone has returned to the island. Not a smart move, as despite his supposed innocence, he ended the episode in a fucking hole. Literally. The jury's still out on whether his abductors are simply cohorts of McColl or whether the threat comes from elsewhere, but it's currently looking a tad ominous for Malone.

But is he guilty of anything more than sporting a magnificent beard and knocking out a few pervy sketches? I haven't seen the teaser for next week's episode, but I hope this isn't the last we'll be seeing of Stephen Walters. I can't conceive of an actor more suited to playing a disgruntled Scot, largely pissed-off with the injustices of the world and on the verge of snapping. Clearly his time on Outlander has helped hone his Scottish accent. Surprisingly, it was the softer side of his character which I found most affecting. Seeing Malone return to his old house, the tap still dripping water into an overflowing dish, the photos of a past now long gone, and the rediscovery of his Sony Walkman, all smacked of a man displaced. Returning to Shetland might end up being the worst decision he ever made, but it makes sense that he'd try to reconnect with his roots.

Perez asking himself what happened in the break between interviews, appears to be the pivot on which all else balances. If Malone is innocent, then why did he initially confess to Lizzie Kilmuir's murder? Evidently something changed, and Drew McColl likely knows what. I get the impression that Drew really does believe that Malone killed Lizzie and his daughter, yet Malone saying that Drew deserved what happened to him really seemed to hit a nerve. Clearly McColl's feeling guilt over some past indiscretion: but what? Is Malone simply pissed that McColl threatened a confession out of him, while the real killer roamed free? It was a injustice which lost him twenty plus years of his life after all. Or does he think that McColl is somehow more intimately involved in Lizzie's death?

Obviously, it's a bit early to be talking suspects, but the Norwegian guy is the most obvious culprit—which almost certainly means it's not him. The fact that he's always seen wearing a hood suggests that he's either a character we know already, or someone they intend to slip by us later in the story. There's also the Forst Energy subplot to figure in, but details are currently scant. Sally seems to be the key, as she was investigating Forst Energy when she died, but she was also working on a piece about Drew McColl. Could she have uncovered something sinister about her father during her research... something that could have got her killed? That would certainly explain why Drew flinched at Malone's words; but how would Malone know any of this?

There's also Alan Killick to consider. True, he seems like the devoted boyfriend, and his grief did feel genuine, but he did argue with Sally on the night she was killed, and there are wrinkles in his alibi. Like why Donna lied about him being home by eleven. Or why he dumped his takeaway. And should we also be suspicious of Sally's deaf house-mate, Jo? Was her giving Alan free festival tickets merely a kind gesture, or were the furtive side glances she kept giving him symptomatic of some deeper, albeit unrequited, emotional attachment? Although the thought of her murdering Sally may seem a little extreme, she has a violent past we're only partially privy to, and having Sally out of the way may not be the worst result for her.

Initially, I was a little puzzled by how a deaf woman was be able to detect a Norwegian accent, but I have a theory. The Norwegian man was hooded, so there was no possibility of her reading his lips. However, assuming  that Jo knew Sally spoke just one foreign language, she would only need to read Sally's lips to know she wasn't speaking English, making Norwegian the obvious second choice. Of course, we only have Jo's word that the hooded stranger was Norwegian. So that may not be true. In fact, virtually everything we've learned tonight could be untrue—the red herring is still annoyingly alive and swimming in 2018—the question is: who's lying to cover up a murder?

Other Thoughts:

—A pint of milk is still 49p. Which either shows the writer's ignorance of grocery prices, or the underpricing of today's milk.

—Lovely performance from Neve McIntosh. I'd almost forgotten what she looks like out of her Silurian prosthetics.

 —The actor who played Jo—Sophie Leigh Stone—has also been on Doctor Who. She played deaf crew-leader Cass in 'Under the Lake/Before the Flood'.

—I'm glad they're sticking to the serialised storytelling format, instead of the shorter form they utilised in the first two seasons. Yes, it draws less on Ann Cleeves' novels, but I prefer the added complexity.

Quotes: 

Perez: 'He can trust me... if he's telling the truth. See, if you're not, you're gonna wish you'd never set eyes on me.'

Tosh: 'The thrill of trying to pee whilst hovering over a chemical toilet doesn't hold the same allure as it once did.'

Perez: 'You do know that I don't want you to go, right? If it was up to me I'd have you tagged, so you couldn't leave.'