Ian Hart Talks The New Series Of BBC’s Shetland

More Than Meets The Eye

BBC’s Shetland returns for a new series on 6 November and here’s one of its stars Ian Hart talking about it…

An experienced Oxford University Professor of Mathematics, Euan Rossi arrives on Shetland after discovering his former student, Annie Bett, has gone missing. On the surface, he comes across as genuinely concerned but it quickly becomes clear there’s more to Professor Rossi than meets the eye. His arrival on the Isles came about after Annie left him a voicemail out-of-the-blue asking for help and he didn’t hesitate to travel to Shetland. While Tosh and Calder initially find Rossi’s story somewhat suspicious, he manages to convince them he’s sincere. However, Calder can’t shake her doubts about Rossi and it’s not long before his façade begins to slip and his true colours are revealed.

Welcome to Shetland! Can you tell us about your character, Euan Rossi?

In simple terms he’s Annie Bett’s [Sarah MacGillivray] mentor after being her tutor at Oxford University. Very early on, he spotted that Annie was a maths whizz so he focussed on her. And that’s where their relationship begins, he recognised that she was a cut above the rest in terms of the way she critically thinks and that could be useful to him…to everybody, for whatever other things he’s up to which are not that straightforward shall we say.

Initially, it was just about getting Annie to be the best mathematician so he employs her as part of a code breaking exercise and then that’s where their story begins…

What drew you to the role of Euan Rossi?

Oddly enough it was more a general thing with the show. A good friend of mine for over twenty-five years, David Kane, was involved in the show for years and so I’ve always known about it. It just seemed like a really interesting take on a crime detective show, there’s something really different about Shetland, something more personal about it as a crime drama.

Most crime shows are urban and these can be interchangeable – there’s always an alley with bins in it for a chase, let’s be honest. But you get to Shetland and it’s completely different, it’s a unique location. I love it when people say “there are no trees in Shetland” and you think “of course there are” but, you know, there aren’t. Not really, not any natural, indigenous ones to the land, just ones people have planted in their gardens. And that’s kind of a weird thing to see, you know.

And the colour and texture of the land is different too – it reminds me of the west coast of Ireland to a degree.

Is it true you experienced four seasons in one day in Shetland?

The weather can change in an hour and while that sounds like a cliché it is true in the case of Shetland! It can change by the time you’ve walked down the stairs to be honest. You can look out of the window and think “oh it’s a nice day for a walk” and then by the time you’ve walked down the road, you need to turn around and go back for your mac.

The first time I went out for a walk I had to turn back and get dressed head-to-toe in waterproofs because the wind comes in a direction I’d never seen or experienced before! You’ve got to really be equipped for some extremes of weather there because you could be sweating ten minutes later.

What brings Rossi to Shetland?

Well, not to give too much away, he gets a phone call from Annie who he hasn’t seen or heard from in over ten years. There’s something about that that piques his interest, her voicemail makes him fear something has gone wrong for Annie. At this point he doesn’t know what has happened to her so he heads to Shetland to go and investigate, he thinks he owes her somehow, he feels obliged to help Annie. I don’t think he knows what has happened to Annie, it could be just that she is in trouble.

Ah but Calder is suspicious of Rossi the moment he arrives isn’t she?

With Calder, it’s a game. What someone might suspect and what someone can prove are two very different things and Rossi is bright enough to understand the difference. By the very nature of what Calder does for a living, she’s suspicious of Rossi. She’d be a very poor police officer if she wasn’t suspicious! Rossi is familiar with the world of police investigations – he knows what they’re about. He knows that, provided you don’t give too much information away, it only remains a suspicion.

You’ve played a very famous Professor in the past in Harry Potter but Rossi is an altogether different one…

They’re very different things aren’t they? Very different indeed. It’s not the simplistic thing of fantasy versus reality. It’s more than that. There’s a certain heightened, stylistic space that the Potter World occupies whereas Shetland is far more real.

This is a series which feels so grounded, so much part of that landscape and that life, that it kind of grounds everything else that goes along with it. Essentially all stories when you take them out of their context are just far-fetched nonsense but by grounding it the way they do in the location of Shetland, you accept that it represents reality far more than a magician.

Oddly enough, statistically speaking, Shetland has the lowest crime rate of anywhere in the whole of the United Kingdom and yet, you buy it straight away that these things can happen there.

Have you ever visited the Shetland Isles before or was this a first time for you?

I’d seen it on the map and knew that it was closer to Norway than Scotland but I’d never been before. Getting there is a journey, a real experience in itself. You’ve got to get that little propellor plane from Aberdeen and you’re up and down before you know it – no time for a cuppa. I think I got a biscuit on one journey though which was nice. It’s a really interesting and unique place.

Went to Unst [on one of the Shetland Isles] and I got around as much as I could between filming. I was lucky enough to get some incredibly sunny days with lovely sunsets too, the light is so amazing there – you don’t get to experience that if you live in the city.

The place is interesting and so are the people. I think places that are on the edge attract really interesting people. For such a small community, there’s an incredible array of characters once you get talking to the locals. I mean all the lovely locations you see when you google Shetland are incredible but it’s the people you meet when you pop into the local shop or whatever – it’s got such an interesting collection of people in Shetland.

Although your character is very brooding and serious, were there lots of laughs on set?

What’s the point in going to work if you’re not going to have a laugh? It’s the human condition to want to enjoy the company of others. The people on that show are all absolutely lovely, every last one of them from the props department, art department, sound, make-up…everyone.

I worked with Ashley briefly and fleetingly on a film called A Cock and Bull Story some time ago. Both her and Alison were absolutely lovely to work with, kind and supportive and just lovely people to be around.

Shetland is hugely popular the world over – what do you think is the secret to its success?

There’s a Scandi Noir vibe to Shetland – it instantly feels different from other UK shows. We all love a good story and the stories in Shetland are always good. The personal lives of the characters are given equal weight and measure to the tension of the crime drama so you get behind them and invest in them over a good chunk of time. Will they, won’t they? And all the other things which are not just to do with police procedure.

Have you filmed in Scotland before?

I’ve filmed in Scotland quite a lot over the years. With Harry Potter we visited a ruin somewhere I remember! But for the bulk of my career, being in Scotland has meant Glasgow or Edinburgh really. Although we did film up in the Highlands for Mary Queen of Scots.

It’s nice to get beyond the cities until you get eaten by midgies in the Cairngorms – there’s about eight million biting insects wanting to eat you. They bite the horses you’re filming with and then the horses go crackers and then someone in the crew says “can you just stand still next to the horse?” and you think “not really, mate, the horse is going nuts because it’s getting bitten!” But Scotland is beautiful, you can’t find a more beautiful country, I think.

And memorable moments from filming on Shetland?

Well there was a quiz night in Scalloway. We started off well but as the pints went down, we started losing focus a little and forgot the whole object of the exercise was actually to correctly answer questions! It wasn’t just me though, Lesley Hart [plays Noreen Stack] and Vincent Regan [plays John Harris] were on my team too but we were pretty awful to be honest. We had some floating people who would come in, answer a couple of questions and then leave so it wasn’t entirely our fault we were so terrible.

Can you sum up in five words what fans can expect from the new series of Shetland?

Not what you think…maybe!