Spoilers, obviously. And on to space, the final frontier. Or possibly Unst

Perhaps it wasn’t wise to come to Shetland fresh from binge-watching both The Day of the Jackal reboot (a pale shadow of the fantastic David Fincher/Michael Fassbender movie The Killer which it so obviously rips off) and the Netflix Santa’s-got-a-Kalashnikov series Black Doves (Tory ministerial wife as ruthless killer; that old chestnut). Both of these are knowing, daft and colossally high-end in terms of budget. They look like the millions of dollars they cost. Shetland, in comparison, looks like  a youth fellowship pantomime with overtones of The Revenger’s Tragedy via River City. 

By the way, I once saw a Citizen’s Theatre production of Hamlet where the entire front row of teenage schoolgirls on a bus outing  shouted insults at the cast throughout. Until the murder/suicide scene when Hamlet silenced them by casually spraying the whole bunch with fake blood. Give that man a cigar!

Anyway here we are with another lukewarm-to-chilly opening, this time flashing back to the late Annie and Noah picking up the late Anton outside the gene therapy/cosmetic dentistry/eyebrow sculpting/limpet farming Portacabins of Doom. While practising their prime numbers. Fun parenting! Then it’s off to the scene of the double murder to be, well. Doubly murdered. Except for Noah, of course, who will sleep in the bath and subsequently have bad dreams about a nasty giant alien lizard. As you do.

To the police station, where Kyle the Irish DJ/Manchester hitman/drug dealer (loads of those in Lerwick, especially at the Fishermen’s Mission) is being quizzed by Ruth’n’Tosh. It’s all about Lisa Eyebrows (“Lisa’s a bombscare” says Kyle…a what?… “she’s too much for me”. But they came up from Manchester together With A Gun. And Lisa took it off him. Lisa and Annie were seen arguing about something, possibly the correct order of the Fibonacci Sequence. So obviously Lisa did it. She screams at crosses in the Kirk, like in The Devils. Or Sister Act, I forget which. No, no, obviously Annie did it, because she took the gun off Lisa, transformed herself into a lizard using magic mathematical spells, shot Anton because of his accent and then, having shot herself, turned back into the not-very-loving mother she was, only dead. Makes perfect sense. Noah’s in the bath. He sees dead lizards.

Except no, It turns out that Lisa was raped by Michael, husband of Noreen, father of baby Finn, auntie of Noah, and Annie was going to report it on her behalf. This is what she was talking about with Lisa, while removing the gun for unsafe keeping. This is also what she was going to talk to Tosh about back at that dodgy kilted party in episode one.

So Michael is a lizard monster. Except he’s not. And having fed us so many red herrings over the last few episodes, the denouement is dafter than any of them. Far from being furiously homicidal towards husband Michael when she finds out about the rape, Noreen decides to convince Annie not to say a word. She follows her, Anton and Noah to the croft where Noah goes to sleep in the bath. Handily, Annie has brought the fully loaded gun and placed it on an accessible shelf. 

Noreen is wearing one of those long padded jacket things, which I believe are described as puffer coats, in a shade of olive green. Sales of which have now dropped to zero as from now on wee boys will shout at any woman wearing one “murdering lizard!” For lo and behold, Noreen grabs the gun, accidentally shoots Annie in a struggle then not only shoots Anton deliberately, but finishes him off with a coup de grace, just like Keira Knightley or Ben Whishaw in Black Doves. Or Tony Soprano. Television is AN EVIL INFLUENCE!

But Noreen is not a Black Dove, or a Soprano, she is a Green Alien Lizard Woman, and when Noah’s daft and deranged dad takes him back to the croft of the crime, she is revealed as the accidentally murdering murderer when she tries to protect Noah from dopy dad and her face LITERALLY TURNS GREEN. I’m not sure if this is make-up, a special effect or if we’re meant to believe that she REALLY IS TURNING INTO A LIZARD, or the Wicked Witch of the Western Isles, but this whole sequence defied belief. Because who telephones the cops? Noreen does.

Ruth sees the reptile in Noreen (never liked that coat: you wouldn’t see Metropolitan Ruth in any ripstop puffer padded nylon) and arrests are duly made. Who’s going to look after wee baby Finn, asks Lisa, as dad Michael, rapist housing officer, is carted off too. Not to worry, a sea eagle swoops down, carries the baby away and rears him as its own. Months later, thinking he’s fledged, the child jumps off its cliff ledge nest into the sea, is rescued by a passing  social worker, and, when grown up, writes a searing exposé of local care services.

The best bit of the entire series: Lisa and Camper Van Angus, the Dutch activist, head off to Unst to investigate the spaceport (which exists, though it recently suffered an ‘anomaly” when a rocket blew up). “We’ll find out what’s really going on up there,”says Angus (played by Jimmy Yuill, who was Inspector Doug Kersey in Wycliffe), “they say there’s a launch pad. I think it’s a landing site. They’re expecting visitors.” Good grief, is that where Noreen, Green Lizard Woman, came from? Beamed down to Unst from the Planet Stupidity?

Ruth steals her brother Alan’s box of toy dinosaurs and gives them to wee Noah, who’s off to Edinburgh to get away from all the mayhem. He’s delighted. That stegasaurus looks like…a lizard! Happy memories!

Tosh and Ruth have a drink at the Fjara cafe next to Tesco in Lerwick (surely their glasses of  white wines are bigger than that? No wonder Ruth cursorily orders a magnum of Buckfast, or two) and together they gaze out over the Vast Northern Ocean. “You can see Norway from here,” mutters Ruth, possibly slurring her words somewhat.

“Aye,” says Tosh, “Let’s get rat-arsed. Then we’ll see if we can make any sense of this series.”

“I very much doubt that,” says Ruth.

• Season 10 of Shetland has already been filmed and will be broadcast sometime in the new Year. If you’ve enjoyed these summaries, from next week I’ll be introducing for subscribers my own take on crimebusting in Shetland, in the serialisation of my novel A Passing Of Wind: The Shetland Decapitations, starring Detective Sergeant Mary Lou Everley. She never goes out without a bunnet.