Sunday 10 March 2013

'Shetland' - bloody revenge of the enraged cellphone user




The truth is, Mima (or Mina, or Meena or whoever the hell one of the only two real Shetlanders with speaking roles was playing) was killed by an enraged TV scriptwriter who, during his four hour research trip to Hjaltland and environs, couldn't get 4G, 3G or any damn G at all (save that gee-gee 3 used in their advert) to update Facebook, check his emails and Tweet about how far north he was.

So now you know.

Actually, that isn't true, just in case you were wondering. Myrna (or Marnie or Morna) was actually shot by a furious representative of the Danish national TV corporation, severely pissed off at an attempt to make a murder mystery where it is always so bloody dark, even in summer, even at midday,  my Tesco telly wouldn't show anything but weird shadows of a woman in a horned (horned?) viking helmet.

I'm lying. Not about the horns.

She was killed by members of Shetland ForWirds, the dialect campigning group, berserk with anger at the gallimaufry (Celtic, not Norse word) of accents paraded here. Northern Irish? Surely they're not going to pretend that's a Bressay lilt? No "She came here on holiday". After seeing this, it's doubtful if anyone else will, not unless they're keen on digging up skulls in surpassingly dreich weather. In Ayrshire, where most of 'Shetland' was actually filmed. Sorry, and Renfrewshire.

False.



I have not read Red Bones, the Ann Cleeves novel 'Shetland' is based on. I have tried, but I find Cleeves' style of detective fiction, which is sort of Agatha Christie meets Patricia Cornwell, round at Colin Dexter's house, pretty alienating. I have struggled through the first Jimmy Perez book, Raven Black, and it looks like chunks of that have been lifted and chucked into the tellymix too. Because Up Helly A' is irresistible to tellyvolk, even if you do film in summer and then pretend everything goes pitch dark when the street lights go off...even though it's dark at noon, and...oh never mind. I was expecting David Kane's script to strip off a lot of the angsty wallpaper,  all the Inner Wondering About Dark Secrets Of The Past. But no. They were there, just jerkily presented in a form of televisual shorthand.  A form few, if any could make head nor tail of.



The characters were confusing. The accents were generally odd, with the exception of Sandra Voe and Stephen Robertson, who is such an outstanding actor (superb in He Kills Coppers, Red Riding and a lot more) and so obviously A Real Shetlander, that he threatened to tip the action heavily towards himself whenever he opened his mouth. Dougie Henshall, who can be very good, seems to have decided that drunken slurring is the way to a Shetland accent. He's been mixing with the wrong crowd.

I know most people won't care about the ludicrous abuse of Shetland's geography, or about the way a genuine piece of history (the Shetland Bus operation) has been traduced in the story. I know quite a lot about what happened in Shetland during World War Two. Some of it was terrible. Some of it was worse than that. There was unbelievable heroism and great tragedy. To see it reduced to a chessboard TV murder plotline is actually a bit upsetting.

'Shetland' and Red Bones both use a place, a people and a history as local colour for a sub-Taggartian, linear-with-flashbacks whodunnit. The TV treatment is dull, unimaginative, creaky and is a throwback in writing and direction to pre-digital drama. It's Softly Softly, not the Shadow Line. And most obviously not ITV's vastly superior Broadchurch, with which it goes head-to-head on Monday.

There has been a great deal of bigging-up of 'Shetland' in Shetland, not to mention tremendous enthusiasm and some of the islands' promotional tourist cash ploughed into the production. The end result felt like a betrayal.

And in fact, I know who killed Meernamornamynamoira: It was one of those native Shetlandic bagpipers. you know, the ones at the traditional Shetland 'kaylee'...in Dalry.

1 comment:

  1. Very good review, I agree; didn't enjoy it. Cliched and slow, badly scripted, wrong accents and pretty patronising to real Shetland people. None of it should have been filmed in Dalry.

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