A familiar face to many fans thanks to BBC One dramas seen on both sides of the pond, as well countless theatre performances in the British Isles and a smattering of feature film roles in the United States, American audiences are in for a real treat as Glasgow-born Douglas Henshall’s latest television series, the critically acclaimed SHETLAND, already in its third season in Britain, finally finds its way to the United States and here in Southern California, to KCET.
Based on the Ann Cleeves murder mysteries set in Shetland, an archipelago of more than 100 islands to the northernmost part of Scotland with 1500 miles of shore giving one a 360 degree view of ocean (Shetland is so far north, in fact, it’s never completely dark), the series revolves around Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez played by Doug Henshall. Recently returned to his native island to raise his daughter Cassie after the death of his wife, Perez is thrust head first into murder investigations invading this once quiet community where doors are never locked and everyone knows everybody’s business. On his team is DC “Tosh” McIntosh (Alison O’Donnell), fresh from Glasgow and not welcomed so warmly by the locals, and life-long Shetlander DC Sandy Wilson (Steven Robertson). Always fiercely protecting Perez and his team with their police work is Rhona Kelly (Julie Graham), Procurator Fiscal, who comes into the mix after the initial two-part series one opener. Setting SHETLAND apart from typical police procedurals is that this is real small town police work without the benefit of big city mainland resources, in fact, cell phone service can only be described as spotty at best. Challenges and intrigue arise as Perez and his team work within the confines of the close knit community and time honored traditions.
During this exclusive interview with Doug Henshall on his most recent trip to the States, we talked about SHETLAND and Jimmy Perez, arguably one of the most textured and emotionally rich characters he has played to date over his already lengthy career.
On viewing SHETLAND, one immediately gets a sense of Angela Lansbury in “Murder She Wrote” and the seaside charm of Cabot Cove, Maine – a close knit community that is set apart from the rest of the world by its homespun values, morals and secrets – but with darker thematics both in story and overall tone of the series and characters. As Henshall agrees with that assessment, he recalls a line from the first episode. “Jimmy says to one of his colleagues in the beginning, ‘It’s just us. There’s no cavalry coming over the horizon.’ I think that (a) it ramps up the seriousness of the situation and (b) it also makes people an awful lot closer because they have to work together that much closer. And also, when it’s difficult to get phone signals anywhere then, again, it makes you kind of improvise a little bit. I’m glad you like it and I like your description. That’s absolutely correct.”
Knowing the series premise, Henshall had to ask himself if he wanted to assume the role and, personally important to him, why. “[O]ne of the things that made me want to do it was because I thought he was basically a nice man. An awful lot of detectives on these tv series [are] either alcoholic, they have gambling problems, there’s some big crutch that they’re hiding. Basically the thing with this guy was he was trying to bring his daughter up the best way that he could having lost their mother. I think that appealed to me because it was much more of a kind of recognizable heart that somebody had. And I thought, he’s just a good man trying to do the best he can, but it’s more recognizable as being something quite normal that’s quite wrong with him. He misses his wife and he’s struggling to bring up his daughter who isn’t his biological daughter. I really like that.” Aiding in Henshall’s decision was the fact that “I’m a middle-aged man and I don’t have any kids, but I’ve been surrounded by my sister’s kids my whole life and watched them grow up, so I felt like some of that was familiar to me and familiar enough to me for me to be able to drop into it quite comfortably. And then the rest of it came around. . .I’ve tried very hard to make him as untypical as possible. I like that about him. The more he is like that the better I like him.”
Henshall is quick to credit David Kane who wrote the pilot and a number of episodes since. “I’d worked with him a number of times over the years and we both come from the same city in Glasgow. We know each other very well. And I love the way he writes for both men and women.” Listening to Henshall, his admiration and appreciation for Kane’s strength at writing for men and women is undeniable. “He’s one of the very few men who write well for women. He writes recognizable women and he writes men who like women. I like that about the writing and I think that comes over very clearly. You’re dealing with a man who actually enjoys the company of women, not in any predatory way, but he likes being around them. He likes talking to them, he knows how to relate to them. I liked all that stuff.”
Having said that about Kane and his writing, thoughts immediately turn to Henshall’s female co-stars and their characters, particularly Alison O’Donnell as DS Alison “Tosh” McIntosh. Fans of the Cleeves novels will recall that Tosh isn’t in any of the books. She is an invention of David Kane and a testament to his skill as a writer given that Tosh feels as natural and as much a part of the equation as if she had been in the books. While Henshall describes Tosh as “wonderfully kind of left field and quirky. She is quite unique in many ways.”, his enthusiasm for actress Alison O’Donnell is unbridled and genuine.
“Alison is fantastic. She’s got a pretty tough journey because you watch Alison in the pilot and then you watch her in Series 3 which has just come out, and the growth that she’s made as an actor is quite amazing. That was the first kind of big job that Alison had ever had on the television. She really had no, had very little, experience of being on a tv screen or in front of a camera at all. So to work in it and try to learn on a primetime BBC One show isn’t the easiest thing in the world. I love her to death. I think she’s fantastic and she’s just grown and grown and grown throughout the series.” O’Donnell’s authenticity as Tosh comes early on in the series as Tosh arrives at her first murder scene and promptly proceeds to vomit. As Jimmy tells her, “You’ll get used to it”, without missing a beat O’Donnell deadpans, “No. It’s the Dutch chocolate vodka.” Not only is the dialogue itself refreshing and lightens the darker thematic notes of murder investigations, but the natural and casual delivery of O’Donnell is perfect. And as Henshall points out “She’s kind of perfect for that. . .But again, a lot of the credit for that goes to David Kane. He writes recognizable people.”
Interestingly, Henshall was unfamiliar with the Cleeves books before he accepted the role of Jimmy Perez. “They were a complete surprise to me. I was sent a draft for the pilot and then once I said I was interested and I wanted to do it, I was made aware of the fact that [SHETLAND] was a series of books by Ann Cleeves.” On learning of the book series, Henshall admittedly thought twice before delving into them. “ I remember doing ‘Anna Karenina’ years ago and I’m reading that and thinking, ‘Oh God! I don’t want to go in there and say, and in the book it says that’, so I think sometimes it’s best to just deal with the material you’ve got.” In this case, however, “I thought it would be helpful to probably go read one. I read the first one just to see if there was anything in the books I could bring to the script. . .There were a couple of useful things in the first book, just about Jimmy Perez the character, that I tried to incorporate.”
While America and Southern California KCET viewers are starting at the beginning of SHETLAND, the series itself is in its third season (or series, as referred to in Britain), and is deviating from the prior formats. Series 3 is an original single story six-episode mini-series unto itself, not based on any of the Cleeves books, something that elates Doug Henshall. “I was always hoping that we would spend six hours on one story. I think it’s a much more interesting format. I think you have much more scope for character development and relationships between people. I think there’s much more room for growth for all, for writers, for actors, for everybody to be able to explore things a little deeper. This third series is a six-hour one story, an original story. . .We have a great team of writers. David Kane is back again and also Gabby Chiappe is the main writer on this series. They’ve done a fantastic job.”
But Doug Henshall isn’t just about television work. Although few and far between the past decade or so, he is no stranger to film as audiences know from his most recent turn as Sheriff Mallick in Kristian Levring’s gorgeous “The Salvation” in which Henshall co-starred with Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Not who one might typically envision in an American western, Henshall is ideal as Mallick and as he gleefully boasts, “I had such a great time working on that movie!”
As is evident when talking with Henshall, he is generous with accolades for colleagues and truly embraces the collaborative spirit of filmmaking and television production; in the case of “The Salvation” electing to sing the praises of Mikkelsen and Green. “I think Mads is just amazing. But also, the person I was most impressed with was Eva Green. I think she’s just astounding because she doesn’t have one line of dialogue to say in the whole movie. But I didn’t want to look at anybody else the minute I saw her on the screen. She is astounding!”
Another terrific film experience, albeit not with such terrific result for Henshall, was “The Eagle” starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell. “I got cut from that. That’s the first time that’s ever happened to me in my career. I had a great time out there. I got to ride chariots through the forest in Hungary for a couple of weeks because I was supposed to be in this big chase sequence with Channing Tatum, but I ended up on the cutting room floor on that one. . .But I had great fun doing it. I have nothing but good memories.”
At the end of the day though, despite his extensive and varied theatre work and the occasional film, Doug Henshall appears to be the “go to guy” for police procedurals and detective characters, something that bodes as a bit of typecasting. “To be absolutely honest with you, yes it is. But at the present moment, especially on British television, 75% of what is happening is police procedural dramas. If you’re not playing policemen, there’s very little else going on at the present moment which is in itself kind of quite depressing given the amount of stories that there are to tell. Setting that many [stories] through the prism of a police procedural is kind of depressing. . . Ever since I hit 40, I’ve been asked to play a lot of policemen. I suppose when they’re interesting characters with an interesting story then that’s great. But that’s one of the reasons why theatre keeps me sane. The choice there is as varied as it ever was and the theatre was my first kind of love, so I enjoy playing that. Then occasionally a movie comes along.” Laughingly, Henshall recalls, “I suppose I did have a movie career about 20 years ago, but they forget about you very quickly, so only occasionally now do I get to do films. I wish I could do more because I really enjoy them.” Surprising is Henshall’s take on American tv versus British tv. “I know in America you guys think British tv is the best, but the opposite is very true. People like me look toward the television coming out of this country [America] as the most innovative and exciting and well written stuff that’s going on.”
One of the benefits of shooting in Shetland is that Henshall essentially gets to play in his own backyard. Born and raised in Glasgow, before taking on the role of Jimmy Perez, it had been seven years since Henshall was last home. “It is fun because we do shoot some of it in Glasgow in studio. . .It’s lovely to go up for the music. There’s great music on SHETLAND and it is nice to go home. It’s really lovely to go home. . . [SHETLAND] is a lovely excuse to go and see friends, see more of my family, and be around people that I don’t have to explain myself to ever. I’d forgotten how friendly Glasgow is as a city because London is so brash. It’s like New York in that way that most people are fairly miserable. I forgot that Glasgow is a much nicer, kinder, easier place to be. So it’s been really refreshing. I’ve seen friends that I haven’t seen for years and been able to kind of reconnect with them. It’s been a hugely positive experience on lots of fronts.”
And while Henshall easily falls back into the comfort of Glasgow on his now semi-regular visits, Shetland itself is nothing like his childhood home. “It’s unrecognizable.” But after three series now, Shetland and its residents have found a place in Henshall’s heart and vice versa. “It’s been a journey. People initially were very friendly towards us. A little curious what we were about and how were perhaps going to represent Shetland. Were we going to patronize them or were we going to be exploitative or were we going to be respectful? When the pilot came out, there were some aspects of it that really didn’t go down well, so we had a lot of bridges to build when we were back there to shoot the first series. Then when that aired people then realized we were genuine and we were trying to reflect the island in a positive sense. . .They’ve been great with us. Then when we were back to shoot series 2, it was like we’d won. People couldn’t have been more helpful or more supportive towards us. It’s taken awhile as most relationships should. It’s taken a little bit of time to get to know one another properly. I think they trust us now and I love going there. I miss it when I’m not there now.”
As for Henshall’s hopes for what the American audiences will appreciate most now that they get to see SHETLAND for themselves? “I think it will be the scenery. First and foremost. It’s not quite as lush as ‘Outlander’ because SHETLAND is a lot more stark. It’s beautiful but there’s no trees and the weather can be quite brutal. The wind is constant. But it’s got a really stark kind of majesty to it and when you’re up by the cliffs, it does look like the end of the world. It’s a place unlike any other. I think that’s really gonna stand out. Then, the characters and the story themselves, people will bleed into those. . .Hopefully, we can keep growing and expanding on that.”
SHETLAND airs in Southern California as part of “Whodunit Sundays” on KCET. Sundays at 9pm PT with an encore showing Mondays at 12:30 am PT.
