A truly excellent detective series with a different feel thanks to the little known location. The wind and rain swept treeless Shetland location gives a wonderfully authentic atmosphere to the tried and true detective series. I became hooked on Scandinavian detective series through watching Mhz Worldview, particularly as I liked the alternative to London and New York settings which highlight the fact that there is a whole other world out there - a world of small communities where everyone is related to everyone else and the few small towns are like villages where everyone is a family.
Like many people, all I knew about the Shetland Isles is that they were as far north as you can go in the British Isles, almost in the Arctic, had once belonged to Norway, had bad cold weather and were not very high on the list of places I would like to visit.
The ensemble acting is superb, with cameos by famous actors such as Brian Cox, as is the occasional dialect speech 'simmer dim' for the long white summer nights which never get totally dark and people can still be sitting out in the twilight way after midnight. I particularly liked the episodes paying homage to the Shetland Bus operation of WW2 where the Shetland seamen helped ferry agents, money and supplies to Norway, and bring back refugees to help the war effort.
One caution is that they do a lot of drinking - straight from the bottle. A visitor is likely to be handed a glass of whisky along with the bottle! They must never have got through the cases of whisky washed ashore in the film 'Whisky Galore'.
Like many people, all I knew about the Shetland Isles is that they were as far north as you can go in the British Isles, almost in the Arctic, had once belonged to Norway, had bad cold weather and were not very high on the list of places I would like to visit.
The ensemble acting is superb, with cameos by famous actors such as Brian Cox, as is the occasional dialect speech 'simmer dim' for the long white summer nights which never get totally dark and people can still be sitting out in the twilight way after midnight. I particularly liked the episodes paying homage to the Shetland Bus operation of WW2 where the Shetland seamen helped ferry agents, money and supplies to Norway, and bring back refugees to help the war effort.
One caution is that they do a lot of drinking - straight from the bottle. A visitor is likely to be handed a glass of whisky along with the bottle! They must never have got through the cases of whisky washed ashore in the film 'Whisky Galore'.