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Warning: contains spoilers for Shetland series nine episode five.
Here’s a question: If you wanted to watch a London-set spy thriller, would you tune in to Shetland? Unlikely. You’d watch Slow Horses and congratulate yourself on a choice well made. Shetland isn’t for grimy city shootings, washed-up MI5 agents, and bungled field ops; it’s for felted moors, dramatic clifftops, rolled Rs, and rolling waves the dark matt hue of blueberry skin. It’s for knitwear, and cagoules, and for shortbread at the station where Sandy’s just made a breakthrough on the CCTV.
None of that though, stopped episode five from devoting lengthy scenes to flashbacks set in the unpicturesque English capital.
Series nine swerved out of its lane and its postcode to tell the sad story of Euan Rossi, former spy and addict. We were shown Annie Bett being recruited to the service, then plotting and attending an op at a coked-up Rossi’s insistence, getting shot when Rossi screwed up the plan, and finally, calmly taking her leave after Rossi framed her for the cock-up. Annie needed to get out of London because she missed the Shetland sky, she said. I’m right there with her.
Ian Hart’s Rossi cut a sorry figure both in the flashbacks and now, needled by his guilt at putting Annie in danger and having unfairly put the blame on her. Now we know what’s behind his unusual interest in little Noah Bett. He’s so ashamed of how he treated Annie that he sees solving her murder as a kind of reparation. Noah’s still the only witness to the shootings, and is the key to unlocking what happened that night.
He’s an unreliable witness, that poor wee bed-wetting mite. First, Noah says he slept through the whole thing, and now he’s plagued by nightmares about being eaten by a lizard up at the scene of the murder. And what should we make of his explosive outburst at Ian? The out-of-control emotions of a grieving child, or a more sinister indication that all is not well in the mind of Noah Bett?
If Noah did pull the trigger, then we’re a little closer to seeing where may have got his little hands on the gun. Lisa Friel and Kyle Frost arrived on Shetland nine months ago, on the run after committing a (thankfully victimless) drive-by shooting in Manchester. They brought the weapon with them, and perhaps that was what Annie and Lisa argued about at the homeless shelter on the afternoon of the murders. If Annie took the gun from Lisa and was planning to hand it in to Tosh the next day, it would have been in her car when she and Noah drove away from that ceilidh on Friday night.
Just three days have passed since then in the world of the investigation, but doesn’t it feel like three months? So much has happened: Ian’s arrest and attack. The lab. Angus. The whole sad business with the Harris family. Astrid running away. Tosh’s estrangement from and reunion with Donnie, finding out that Rossi is a wrong’un… (Speaking of that, do you think Thames House’s Rob Harding got his flights from London to Shetland on expenses? Because they may need to restate their “That could definitely have been a Zoom call” policy.)
And now, the latest twist involving Karin Jakobson, another spy, it turns out. Annie and Rossi’s flashbacks were key to grasping the enormous coincidence on which this episode pivoted: the rogue Swedish intelligence agent who’d shot Annie in London years before was now living in Annie’s remote Shetland home town. What are the chances? Because Karin had an IP address-based alibi for the night of the murders though, unmasking Karin Jakobson as “Brutus” didn’t lead to finding Annie and Anton’s killer.
Realising that all this action has been squeezed into such a short space of time makes it easier to forgive Ruth her ‘bad cop’ attitude in the interrogation room. I get punchy after having a dentist and a hair appointment in the same week, so she and Tosh must be running on fumes by now. Still, it’ll soon be wrapped up and then with any luck, the show will leave the genre-hopping behind and get back to normal for the already-commissioned series 10.
Shetland series nine concludes next Wednesday December 11 on BBC One and iPlayer.
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