Television series

Shetland

Name: Shetland
Genre: Drama, Crime, Mystery
Released: 2013
Cast: Steven Robertson, Alison O'Donnell, Douglas Henshall, Ashley Jensen

Douglas Henshall's DI Jimmy Perez investigates murders that ripple through a small, wind-scoured island community where everyone's past is tangled with everyone else's. It's less about twisty plotting than atmosphere — the light, the sea, the sense that nowhere on this rock is far enough to hide a secret. Based on Ann Cleeves' novels, it's slow, melancholic, handsome crime drama for people who want their mysteries to breathe.

TVMaze rating

8.0

If you liked this

Vera2011

Same author, same misty coastline, same unglamorous grief-driven detective work — Ann Cleeves practically wrote Shetland's sibling show. Brenda Blethyn's Vera is gruffer and funnier but just as tethered to her patch.

But It's cosier and more straightforwardly procedural, with fewer of the moral shadows Shetland likes to sit in.

Broadchurch2013

A small coastal town, a death that cracks open every relationship in it, and grief handled with real weight rather than plot mechanics — the closest mainland cousin Shetland has.

But The second series split audiences, and it leans harder into twist-of-the-week suspense than Shetland ever does.

Happy Valley2014

Sarah Lancashire is extraordinary as a copper whose own family trauma keeps intersecting with the case — harder-edged and angrier than Shetland, but built from the same conviction that place and people are inseparable.

But It's considerably more violent and visceral; the dread here is sharp, not atmospheric.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Wicker Man1973

Both send an outsider detective into an insular island world where the locals share something the law can't touch — Wicker Man just lets the folklore win instead of the badge.

A mainland policeman arrives on a remote Scottish island to investigate a disappearance and finds a tight community that closes ranks around its own version of the truth — Shetland's structure, decades earlier, pushed into folk horror.

But It's genuinely unsettling rather than melancholic, and the ending has nothing to do with the satisfaction of a case solved.

Y Gwyll2013no page yet

Wales's answer to Shetland almost exactly — a haunted detective, a remote landscape doing half the storytelling, cases that dig up decades-old wounds.

But Even slower and bleaker than Shetland; some viewers find it monotonous rather than moody.

The Killing2011

The Danish original that basically invented this mood — one murder stretched across a whole season, an obsessive detective, weather that never lets up. This is where the atmosphere Shetland borrows actually comes from.

But Subtitled, slower-paced, and each season commits to a single case for far longer than most viewers expect.

Line of Duty2012

For the same appetite for slow-burn British crime with real teeth — different engine entirely, corruption and interrogation rooms rather than landscape, but just as gripping.

But It's tighter and more plot-driven, without Shetland's sense of place or its melancholy pace.

Rebus2024no page yet

Ian Rankin's Edinburgh detective is Shetland's urban ancestor — same Scottish weather-beaten morality, same sense of a city or island keeping its secrets close.

But City grit instead of island scenery; the landscape isn't doing the emotional work here the way it does in Shetland.

Bergerac1981no page yet

A detective embedded in a small island community, decades before Shetland made it fashionable — Jersey standing in for the same claustrophobic familiarity, played much lighter.

But Distinctly of its era in pacing and production; it's comfort television, not brooding drama.

River2015no page yet

Stellan Skarsgård plays a detective who talks to the ghosts of victims — melancholic, strange, and far more interested in grief and mood than in solving anything tidily, much like Shetland at its best.

But The supernatural conceit is a hard sell for some, and it's a short run that ends just as it's finding its feet.

The Outrun2024no page yet

Strip away the crime plot and Shetland's real subject is still standing here — how a wind-scoured island holds, and eventually reveals, what people can't say out loud.

Saoirse Ronan returns to the Orkney Islands to face addiction and family history against the same wild, indifferent coastline that gives Shetland its atmosphere — no murder, just a woman trying to survive her own past.

But There's no mystery to solve and no procedural comfort here; it's introspective and can be raw to sit through.