It’s Shetland, Season 9, episode 5. Sort of.

The red herrings are coming thick and fast now. So many I’m, uh, floundering. Actually, they’re not so much herrings as a mixture of anchovies, sardines and mildly magenta piltocks. The show has well and truly jumped the spoot, which I believe is a technical term within the television industry. Or perhaps ‘leapt the whelk’ might be more accurate.

Anyway, to skate over that: yet another cold opening, this time cued up by the continuity announcer because believe me, this episode makes less sense than Gregg Wallace discussing Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Or cooking. And then the title sequence, which is gloriously high-definition, super-saturated seascape drone porn, and would make anyone want to move here. If they didn’t know about all the dodgy Portacabin gene therapists, murderous mussel farmers, inept detectives and the cost of flights to the mainland. Also the 20 or so wild swimmers  eaten each year by killer whales. Some of these glorious titular scenes, by the way, were shot in and around Eshaness, a mile or so from our house. Including Burnside, the spooky cottage that housed Brian Cox in full-on dishevelled peasant mode, long, long ago in season one, two or maybe it was Bergerac.

London 2011, and there’s Annie Betts, alive and being recruited into Mi5 by Professor Squirrel, I mean Quirrel, sorry Rossi, clearly Much Younger as he is resplendent in an orange wig. See you, Jimmy! Apparently Mi5 huckle Gregg Wallace lookalikes in pubs all the time, and shout their secrets to each other in front of unimpressed drinkers of Doom Bar and Theakstons Old Peculiar.

As I say, here come those lovely titles, so much glossier than the rest of the show’s curiously flat visuals, especially the indoor scenes. Reminds me of the fuss at BBC Scotland 40-odd years ago when they were making John Byrne’s iconic Tutti Frutti and ran out of cash towards the end of production, partly because somebody had decided to shoot the titles on hideously expensive 35mm film, for full cinematic effect. The rest was shot on 16mm (or ‘super 16’ as the widescreen version was called) but I think some of it had to be done on video in the end.

Back to the present day, and Peerie Noah is bedwetting, which must have been hellishly embarrassing for the excellent Jacob Ferguson  to film. He’s having a bad dream about malevolent lizards. Then we have Professor Rossi exiting what looks like a hotel in Stockbridge (did I catch a glimpse of Edinburgh Castle in the background?) and then trying to steal a car in Lerwick but finding they’re all locked. Point of information: nobody ever deliberately locks their cars in Shetland, or they didn’t until automatic digital vehicular fascism arrived. Freedom!). He eventually drives off in a ‘Bixter Express’ courier van, leaving whole swathes of Shetland devoid of their Amazon deliveries.

Off he goes, while Ruth and Tosh head to Sumburgh Airport to pick up Ruth’s former squeeze Rob, Mi5 officer, who explains that Annie was shot back in 2011 when she went in all Die Hard to arrest a Nordic traitor codenamed Brutus. Oh ho! That’s ringing Swedish bells. The dodgy Jacobsens are back in the frame! Et tu, Stefan? Down with hygge, meatballs and Pong chairs!

Aaaand we’re back in 2011, Prof Rothesay is coked and pished out of his orange-clad skull, insisting that Annie has to go with him to arrest Brutus. Forward to Cora, who’s had her hair done and drops another red herring, anchovy, spoot or possibly whelk into the queasy plotline: the bullets what killed Anton’n’Annie (convoluted Italian filmmaker reference, possibly)  match a bullet used in a Manchester drive-by shooting. What? Wait a minute, this is episode five and we don’t need another….too late! Turns out the Mancunian suspect shooter, who’s Irish, is in Shetland, and is named Kyle Frost. He’s the murderous murderer because he already tried to murder a Mancunian! Except of course it can’t be him. Because…because.

Everything goes a bit Nokia as Prof Rossi, complete with undelivered parcels and a gun, heads for the Jacobsens, knocks out Stefan and kidnaps Karin, who is clearly Brutus, or Bruta, being the former Swedish defence attaché in London in 2011. It seems Annie saw her and as a former spook, was spooked, called Rossi and then got killed. (Of course, that’s not what happened. There’s a whole other episode to go.) Rossi is bent on revenge for Annie’s death and takes Karin/Bruta to the St Ninian’s Isle tombolo (Annie has already explained in flashback that this is a double-sided beach, and her favourite place in the whole South Mainland of Shetland, other than Spiggie) where he intends to wreak a dreadful revenge, or shoot her, or throw away all those Amazon deliveries or something. But she’s a former Swedish Army officer and spy so takes the gun off him just as Ruth’n’Tosh arrive and, using grenades and a Gatling gun, obliterate both of them.

Alas, not. Both ex-spooks are carted off to the cop shop for interrogation with bannocks and sassermaet, while Rev Alan Calder holds a remembrance service for Annie. Dodgy Lisa of the weird and now definitely Irish accent is in residence at the manse, causing consternation with her sinister eyebrows. Prof Rossi is being interviewed. Did he love Annie. “Not like that” he replies, just as John Harris did to the same question in the last episode. Poor Annie. It seems nobody loved her Like That. Except for that sinister husband of hers. Let them have builders!

So, it turns out Annie getting shot in 2011 was all a vomiting Rossi’s fault, but she took the blame and he’s felt guilty ever since. Thus determined to avenge her death, now he’s clean, sober and no longer wearing that orange wig.

Lisa has a theological conversation with Rev Calder, suggesting that a bit of Catholicism would cheer up his austere kirk a bit. “Does God make people bad?” she asks. “No it’s their choice,” he says. Wow, Arminianism! What happened to Calvinism and predestination? No wonder the Church of Scotland’s in trouble. Karin Jacobsen, Bruta or Brutus, is denying everything, but Ruth tells her she’s going to be thrown to the Mi5 dogs who will undoubtedly send her back to Sweden to the face the music for betraying IKEA and sabotaging flat pack kits with the wrong number of Allen keys and screws.

Donnie and Tosh are back on hand-holding terms at least (where’s the wean, Donnie? Who’s babysitting? Oh, there’s a new nursery in town! Perez Day Care. All is explained). Meanwhile the Noah/Ruth relationship is evolving, and the boy’s bad dream is revealed – he and his mum were chased around the crofthouse by a giant lizard. I’m thinking smelly, scaly oilskins. I’m thinking John Harris or Nasty Patrick. Or given the plotting so far, maybe a giant Komodo dragon is less unlikely. Fetlar is known to have a problem with them.

But hold! What something fishy or herringesque this way comes? It’s Kyle Frost the Mancunian thug, hiding out at…the Seamen’s Mission? Where he’s both dossing down and doing DJ sets until 3.00am. Friends, I am acquainted with Seamen’s/Fishermen’s Missions the length of this land and they are not the junkie/techno/hard house havens portrayed here. Not only that, the exterior used is the Bød of Gremista, birthplace of Arthur Anderson, founder of the P&O shipping line, and the building is now the Shetland Textile Museum. Believe me, it’s A LOT nicer inside than shown. 

Turns out Kyle may have brought the gun north that killed Antonioni but couldn’t have fired it. But guess who he’s best pals with? Lisa Eyebrows of Angus Van Camper-Motorhome and enviro-activism fame. And she’s staring at the cross in Alan’s kirk, presumably wishing for more stained glass and a few statues. Or maybe she’s wondering if she hid that lizard costume securely enough. At the red herring processing plant.