Where Was Shetland Series 11 Filmed? All The Locations To Know
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2 days ago
The BBC's beloved Scottish drama is back on our screens
Calder and Tosh are back in the blustery northern reaches of Scotland for the eleventh instalment of Shetland. Over the past 13 years, the show has cast a rosy glow over the UK’s northernmost region, the Shetland Islands, an archipelago lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. Made up of 100 islands, only 16 of which are inhabited, these rugged isles are home to around 23,000 people (about the size of a small town elsewhere in the UK) and are only accessible by plane and boat – making for some really tight-knit and isolated communities.
At the centre of Shetland series 11 is a historic murder. It all starts with a dilapidated car pulled from the water. Inside, a grim discovery: the decomposed, skeletal remains of an unknown man have been crammed into the boot. Tosh and Calder begin their investigation, fighting to discover exactly who the victim was, and how he ended up there. But first: whose car is this? The answer leads them to a local GP, who left the Shetland Isles under a cloud of troubled rumours almost a decade ago. With our duo delving into his enigmatic state of mind, they connect with the loved ones he left behind and find themselves pulled into the dark and dangerous territory the GP himself fled from.
So where was Shetland filmed and is Lerwick a real place? Here’s everything you need to know.
Where Was Shetland Series 11 Filmed?
DI ‘Tosh’ McIntosh (ALISON O’DONNELL);Billy McCabe (LEWIS HOWDEN);Cora McLean (ANNE KIDD);DC Sandy Wilson (STEVEN ROBERTSON);DI Ruth Calder (ASHLEY JENSEN). Credit: BBC/Silverprint Films/Jamie Simpson
As the name suggests, the detective drama is filmed in and around the Shetland Islands, the UK’s northernmost region, lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands, and Norway. The series has taken us across the isles, including Eshaness and the North Mainland, Burra, and the southernmost tip of Shetland’s Mainland, Sumburgh Head. Some of the filming also takes place on the Scottish mainland, in Glasgow, Greenock, Largs, Kilbarchan, and Lochwinnoch.
Speaking to the BBC, Ashley Jensen (DI Ruth Calder) said: ‘The scenery is the main character. The real hero of the series is Shetland itself. But we film during 20 hours of daylight so I have to have my sleeping mask. Shetland is the enduring appeal of the show. The location is ultimately the star of the show. For me, Shetland has it all – colourful, complex characters set against this extraordinary, beautiful landscape’
Matt Blake (SAMUEL ANDERSON). Credit: BBC/Silverprint Films/Anne Binckebanck
Is Lerwick A Real Place?
The main town in Shetland, both the TV series and the place, is Lerwick. A real town with a population of around 7,500 it has appeared in every series of Shetland so far, with much of the exterior filming done around Commercial Street and the historic Lodberries waterfront.
Key locations to know include Bain’s Beach, Lerwick Harbour, King Erik Street, King Harald Street, and St Olaf Street, the Shetland Bookshop, Lerwick Town Hall and the Lerwick Sheriff Court on Hillhead, which doubles as the police station in the television show (though the interior scenes are shot in a Glasgow studio). It is also home to the Lodberries house (at 14 Commercial Street, Lerwick) the former on-screen home of DI Jimmy Perez, as well as the home of Paddy and Tanya Rose (John McLarnon and Charlene Boyd), in Holmsgarth.
DI ‘Tosh’ McIntosh (ALISON O’DONNELL);DI Ruth Calder (ASHLEY JENSEN). Credit: BBC/Silverprint Films/Anne Binckebanck
Other Key Series 11 Locations
Garth’s Ness
In series 11 we see our detectives exploring the ruins of RAF Garth’s Ness – a former Cold War radio navigation station. The station, which sits on the southern tip of Shetland’s Mainland was commissioned in 1961 and operated until December 31, 1977.
Neap
Scenes from this upcoming series were also shot in a renovated, five-bedroom, white-washed property on the promontory of Neap. A remote headland in North Nesting on the Shetland Mainland, it can only be accessed via a single track road from the hamlet of Brettabister. Available to stay in, it’s 15km from Tingwall Airport and a 20-minute drive north of Lerwick.
Greenock
Based in a detached, two-storey office, the GP surgery where Dr Raymond Linden used to work was filmed at 20 Union Street in Greenock. Greenock is a town located on the southern shore of the Firth of Clyde in the west central Lowlands of Scotland.
Kilbarchan
In episode 1, we see Ruth meets Raymond’s brother in Convoy Cafe. Though not a real cafe, you can visit the quiet village of Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire where it’s located.
DI ‘Tosh’ McIntosh (ALISON O’DONNELL). Credit: BBC/Silverprint Films/Anne Binckebanck
Rowe Point & Eshaness Pier
Both Rowe Point and Eshaness Pier stand-in for Donald Pierce’s remote croft in the series. The former is located at the northeastern extremity of Ivanov Beach on the southeast coast of Barclay Bay in western Livingston Island, while the latter is located in Hamnavoe, a small settlement on the Eshaness peninsula in Northmavine, northwest Mainland.
Stirling
The interior scenes at Dr Linden’s family’s house were filmed at Bannockburn House in Stirling on the Scottish mainland. Dating back to the 17th century, the listed building has also been used in Scotland-set period drama Outlander. The exteriors, however, were shot in Bardister, a small hamlet in Bannockburn on the coastal village of Ollaberry, in the Shetland Islands.
Brae
The home of Dr Linden’s ex-wife Emily (Christine Bottomley) can be found near Brae, a village in Mainland, Shetland.
DI Ruth Calder (ASHLEY JENSEN) & DI ‘Tosh’ McIntosh (ALISON O’DONNELL) in Shetland series 10. (BBC/Silverprint Films/Jamie Simpson)
Where Was Shetland Series 10 Filmed?
Series 10 of Shetland transported us to the close-knit town of Lunniswick – a fictional place, though it draws heavily on Shetland’s very real communities and settlements. ‘The fictional village of Lunniswick is typical of Shetland,’ says Alison O’Donnell who stars in the series as DI Tosh. ‘Scattered houses lining a beach, the neighbours well acquainted with one another and the land they live on.’
Lunniswick isn’t a real Shetland village, but Shetland series 10 was filmed in a real (and similarly named) village: Levenwick, a village hidden around 17 miles south of the islands’ capital, Lerwick. Found on the east side of the South Mainland, only a few hundred people live in the village, making it a true-to-life reflection of the claustrophobic town we see in Shetland.
The real town ‘is on the road between Lerwick and Sumburgh airport’, O’Donnell explains, ‘so I’ve driven past it 100 times but had only actually ever been down there once. I remember on a day off that I just took a fancy and went down to the beach there. It was something different for us, to be in one location for so much of the shoot. Things were very predictable, we knew we were heading to the same place every day for much of it and got into a nice rhythm with that. It’s also a beautiful place so it was very nice to be there.’
Behind the scenes on Shetland series 10. (BBC/Silverprint Films/Jamie Simpson)
Levenwick ‘is rich in history, relationships and secrets, which I really loved as a central focus of the mystery’, O’Donnell adds, referring to Calder and Tosh’s murder investigation in Lunniswick, which sees plenty of locals concealing their relationships with the deceased. ‘There was so much to play with, so much to unpack. As the investigation progresses, we get deeper and deeper into the lives of those who live there and the history of the place. It was very satisfying.’
O’Donnell’s co-lead Ashley Jensen adds Shetland series 10 is ‘a little more insular rather than the expansive locations of last year’ thanks to this setting in Lunniswick. ‘We’ve really come into the nucleus of the small hamlet of Lunniswick and used a real-life town as our location,’ she says. ‘It’s very much a small community where everybody knows each other’s business. The series opens with the murder of a woman from this community and, of course, the houses back on to each other, everybody’s peeping from their curtains and everyone’s kind of involved in each other’s lives – whether they want to be or not.
‘I always like filming on location because it feels more alive,’ Jensen adds. ‘You’re actually in a house, you’re beside the water and you can smell the sea air outside and I find it helpful to feel the damp, feel the cold even though it can be difficult. The fact your hair is going all over the place can add to the wildness of the show and the elements are bigger than you and as much a part of the show as the actors and the storyline.
‘For me, this series is the best storyline out of the three I’ve been involved in,’ Jensen declares. ‘I love the detail of this one and the fact that all the locals are suspects in the murder case.’
DC Sandy Wilson (STEVEN ROBERTSON) in Shetland series 10. (BBC/Silverprint Films/Jamie Simpson)
Co-star Steven Robertson (who plays Sandy) has starred in every series of Shetland thus far, and actually hails from the archipelago. He says that, upon reading the series 10 scripts, it was ‘so obvious from the get go that the location really had to be an intimate, beautiful village with an incredible environment. It actually danced through my head as I first read the scripts: “I wonder if they’re considering Levenwick to be our Lunniswick?”
‘Whenever I drive past Levenwick on my way back from Sumburgh I always glance down at it because it is a sort of magical, little jewel of a village,’ he adds. ‘It’s got a very different feel to it from much of the rest of the Shetland Isles. It feels like you’re really far away, even from the rest of the mainland of Shetland. That sort of mystery and history, absolutely comes across on screen. It’s the perfect location for this storyline.’
Matt Blake (SAMUEL ANDERSON) in Shetland series 10. (BBC/Silverprint Films/Jamie Simpson)
Some scenes – especially those at the police station – are filmed on sets in Glasgow. This means newcomer Matt Blake (who plays Shetland’s new Procurator Fiscal) has still never visited the archipelago despite being cast in the hit series. ‘That’s the magic of television!’ he says. ‘All of my scenes are in the studio in Glasgow, so I didn’t actually go on location to the Shetland Isles. I have said that next series I want to get to the Shetland Isles even if it’s just to hand someone their jacket in a scene. I absolutely now have it on my list of places to visit.’
Shetland returned on Thursday 12 November. New episodes of series 11 will be released weekly at 9pm on BBC One at iPlayer.
