Shetland season 8

[laplage]

Anyone else looking forward to the new season starting on Wednesday? It will seem a bit strange without Perez but looks to be a good cast and storyline so far as we know.

That was the only reason for his journey

Surely it was an excuse to see Ruth again, and there was that annoying Tosh sitting there all the time like some gooseberry!

Funny how Ruth has all these men who remember her fondly (and more!) and she just finds them irritating!

Sorry I’ve not read all the posts but why is it that it as if Tosh and Donny’s child doesn’t exist this season?

Deniability? No recorded telecoms - no official notes.

I wondered if Noah had seen a lizard tattoo on the killer at the croft, and it's come to life in his nightmares? And the big reveal will be next week when Ruth spots the tattoo on someone?

Thought the same. Could it have been the gambling shop guy?

Do you mean the Chinese guy who tried to smuggle Astrid off Shetland? I must say I thought it pretty odd that the lorry driver was prepared to "look the other way" and allow him to put a last minute "package" on the lorry.

Weird Noah can't recall any details but remembers the lizard. I think that's got to be either a scientist or a deep sea diver. Could they have been killed for their dna? Or stem cells? Probably not. I don't even recall what was going on at the place the old man with church young lady visited (was it just stem cell research by one person?)

But wearing a full biohazard suit probably sensible to kill people. But then why at the Croft over say at the science place where they last were.

The whole plot is absolutely laughably bad. It’s such a shame as with better writing and casting it could be a great show.

I think it was an imaginary child, we haven't seen or heard of it (her?) this series.

She’s called Louise and appeared to be a toddler when last glimpsed, which was when Ruth was new. However, maybe she’s grown up into a murderous criminal mastermind since, and is running around in a biohazard suit shooting people?

Big twist for final episode - Louise emerges in a lizard costume! 😂 Needs something to shake it up anyway! I won't be bothering with any further series if they continue.

I just don't think it has to be so complicated. It's as if the scriptwriters are determined to prove that ooh, look, dark international crime CAN take place on this remote and sleepy island, but actually I'd prefer at least 40% of the plot to dig into the psychological impact of living in such a remote, enmeshed community.

And no, Tosh looking 'pained' because she had to arrest the husband of a brutally murdered woman who turned out to be a mathematical genius/codebreaking spook and now her mates who've never mentioned Annie's party trick of splitting a bill eight ways without a calculator are a bit huffy doesn't count.

Yes I prefer more local family based crimes.

Her friends did know she was a maths genius-there was some tv news show from 1990 or so included showing 15 year old her?

Comparing this to the excellent Ludwig, it's just so messy.

Last season was better. We had the lunatic Bain clan with the housekeeper from Downton spitting nails as the matriarch, and Ellen as a believably troubled and fairly unpleasant girl, and Cal and his brother, and the mother and son the Bains had cheated out of their farm, and the weird eyeliner-Pagan guy, and Ellen’s friend and her dodgy husband, and Ruth’s family background stuff, and the two hitmen up from London, and the crofter whose house they holed up in etc etc.

Clearly this season one of the writers said ‘Doesn’t Tosh have any friends? Or Donnie?’ and went with that. It just doesn’t really work, though. I just don’t believe in slightly wet Annie as a brilliant mathematician and former spy, and it’s hard to be that invested in Bergen, who’s been dead throughout the series. I think we needed to see them in at least a few short scenes doing something before they were killed.

And the rest of Tosh and Donnie’s circle seem to be either unpleasant (Is she called Tara? Tash? the dark-haired woman who had the miscarriage and Ian Bett) or to show up briefly to deliver a clue, like Annie’s interest in freight planes, and then vanish again.

But that's what I mean: showing the archive clip is for the viewer's benefit; if that detail about her is then embedded with a casual reference within conversation it starts to feel real, not a plot device. (And Tosh came to the island from Glasgow, so probably wouldn't know about Annie's tv appearance - so someone could have enlightened her.)

Hands up, there's maybe a lot I've missed through struggling to follow what's going on, but this particular series does feel like one plot point after another being dealt out like a pack of cards. With the exception of Noah's distress and the fishing family.

I think the writing is trying to be clever but actually it's all too convoluted. Too much going on.

Comparing this to the excellent Ludwig, it's just so messy.

Indeed. Ingenious writing and plotting that is in a different league to current Shetland,

I reckon that all of the spy stuff is going to be a giant red herring - the murderer is going to be someone from the Tosh/Donnie friendship group.

I think they should also make the final three of the Ann Cleeves Shetland books into storylines. The BBC only made the early ones and not the later books - I'm sure that they could rework the plot for Ruth & the Rev rather than Perez and Duncan. They never made

• Thin Air - where a group of old University friends come up to Shetland to attend some Uni friends' wedding. One person goes missing and is found dead but staged in the manner of a local legend
• Cold Earth - torrential rain causes a landslide that engulfs a small house - believed uninhabited but when rescuers arrive they find the body of a woman.
• Wild Fire - a family from Southern England move to Shetland to give their autistic son a better life but then the nanny is found dead in the barn.

Those all sound like potentially great stories, better than the convoluted but also weirdly thin current one.

I have quite enjoyed this plot line - although highly unlikely.

I was worried we were going to get dragged into more dismal Shetland families, seething with hatred and plotting, but luckily the trawlermen were just a side show.

But do admit, and said previously, why cant more of the plot be to do with Shetland and its interaction with mainland Scotland and Scandanavia.

ie more local politics, even farming issues!

I want the Shetlanders to rise up against the pesky tourists or something, just like they did in Spain and Cornwall.

More discussions about do the really have to go on pretending they just cant wait to do some traditional Scottish dancing (which is more than the English have).

ie a bit more politics, but without it dumbing down to yet another family feud.

But agree that generally the dialogue between colleagues has been very limited, and not very good.

They're the 3 I haven't read yet. But to make them they'd actually have to bother writing well which this lot seem incapable of or can't be bothered.

I think a lizard tattoo is a good shout - but if they do go down the route of using Noah’s dream to solve the crime, it’s a bit lazy given they already deciphered his dinosaur.

I was starting to wonder if Noah actually shot his mum when hiding from whoever was in the Croft, but really no clearer this close to the end of the series.
Will Karin be a double bluff and really had no idea of what was going in, or is she really good at pretending to be the innocent party and has only married Astrids father just to keep an eye on him?

Didn't Ruth say, she must be a very good actor? I was almost inclined to believe her.

@IwantToRetire wrote: I want the Shetlanders to rise up against the pesky tourists or something, just like they did in Spain and Cornwall.

Or: they set the crime during Shetland Wool Week when it’s absolutely full of knitters with their sharp-pointed needles.