Shetland The Complete Series 3   Starring: Douglas Henshall, Alison O'Donnell, Steven Robertson, Mark Bonnar and Julie Graham Distributor: ITV Studios Global Entertainment RRP: £19.99 Certificate: 15 Release Date: 07 March 2016

Shetland is a procedural police drama, created by ITV Studios for BBC Scotland. The show has reached its third series. For the first two series the stories were based on the original novels by author Ann Cleeves, who also created the Vera Stanhope novels. The show still credits her with the characters; however, season three has an original storyline spread across all six episodes...

Shetland: The Complete Series 3 (2016, 6 eps x 58 min approx.) follows the exploits of Inspector Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall), obviously given the show’s title, the action is set in Shetland. For series three there is also a large amount of the story shot on the Scottish mainland when Perez has to return to Glasgow, trying to unravel a double murder with apparently little connection between the two bodies.

There is little in the way of originality about the show. I don’t mean this as a criticism; it’s a police procedural with some character development and conflict involved. There are a plethora of these types of shows, so it often comes down to are you drawn to the main character and is the mystery sufficiently twisty turny enough to keep you interested.

Douglas Henshall is a fine Scottish actor of both stage and screen who imbues the character with a suitable level of personal demons. I say suitable, as this seems to go with the territory these days. Shetland gives the show some wonderful backdrops, but don’t go thinking that it’s mainly empty as the current population is over twenty-three thousand, which makes for a logical reason for it to have its own police force.

The new story works very well in the sense that even though you will follow Perez through some dark places I’d bet good money you won’t work out the answer any quicker that Perez, which is really the point.

The set contains two audio tracks a 2.0 stereo and a 5.1 Dolby Surround, the picture is presented in the original aspect ratio of 16:9 and there is the option for English subtitles. The set contains no extras.

So, the show is a fine example of the genre, well presented. The two disc DVD set is vanilla, so the set's worth will come down to how much you enjoy the show.

6

Charles Packer