Not that Shetland doesn’t have time for Honda-driving mums; they’re some of its best people. Tosh will solve her friend Annie’s murder, just you see if she doesn’t. It won’t come without a personal cost though. That’s the trouble with policing a small community; you’ve probably borrowed Tupperware from the murder victims.
Tosh’s response to Annie’s death was commendable. While visibly shaken, she stuck to the books and kept a cool head. A cooler head, at least, than Ruth, who approached the interrogation of Annie’s husband Ian with all the control of a child trying to shake a pound coin out of a piggy bank. Ruth was certain that Ian’s guilt was in there and, red-faced, she was going to get it out. Their “It felt like we were arguing, from your body language/I get that a lot” exchange in the car afterwards was a top bit of character work, incidentally. We’re still getting to know Ruth Calder, and lines like that tug us closer towards her.
The same can be said for Ruth’s interactions with young Noah Bett (a chip off the old block if his primes-recital is anything to go by). Compare Tosh warmly hugging the boy at the party, with Ruth’s arm’s-length response to his panic attack at the hospital. Her bedside manner may need work, but when it came to his mum’s death, Noah seemed to respond to Ruth’s honesty. It doesn’t seem as though he’s grown up with a lot of that.
Noah’s dad didn’t kill his mum, but Ruth was right about Ian’s guilt. Despite sending Annie a slew of texts straight out of the Andrew Tate school of misogynist correspondence, he turned out to be having it off with one of her mates on the night she died. Classy stuff.
Speaking of romance, we discovered in episode two that the other victim Anton Bergen had summarily dumped his boyfriend just before he was killed. One phone conversation from a mystery caller and it was goodbye to Nathan Huang. Perhaps Bergen knew that he was in danger and wanted to protect Nate?
There’s deffo something fishy about the family Anton was working for, and not just because they’re Scandinavian. The beautiful Jakobsons in their stunning magazine-spread house, with their ill, melancholic daughter, are more than a bit sus. Are they spies too, or might they have something to do with the Nesting facility that conspiracy theorist Campervan Angus is surveilling? Are both things connected? And where do the mussel-farming Harris family fit in? One thing’s for certain: Angus’ tin foil hat blog is going to come in useful one of these episodes.
