Oh no, not Tosh!

I'd missed last Wednesday's episode of Shetland, the TV crime drama set in those far-north islands, so settled down last night to stream it onto my laptop, and watch it in catch-up mode on the BBC iPlayer. The current series - the seventh since the first one in 2013 - was proving well up to scratch, with an intricate plot and plenty of unexpected surprises. But I wasn't prepared for the surprise awaiting me in the closing scene: Detective Sergeant 'Tosh' McIntosh locked inside an isolated caravan far from immediate help, and in a desperate predicament. She has unwittingly broken a trip-wire and set off a bomb, and we see her frantic attempts to break out while she tells her boss, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, what's happening over the phone. All the while a timer counts down to zero. Next, a mighty explosion, with lots of flame, and clearly no survival for anyone still inside the caravan.

I couldn't believe it. What, Tosh killed? Almost the best character, certainly my favourite character. Here she is with Jimmy Perez in a scene from the last series:

It's a difficult interview. Jimmy Perez is leading, and Tosh, the very reliable and competent second-in-command watches him putting the questions. It's a complex murder investigation, of course. They get a lot of those up in Shetland, you know. The constant slaughter is almost as bad as in Midsomer Murders, and frankly it's just a bit off-putting - much as I would like to visit Shetland, and have done so for the last sixty years. The only hope is that the real-life Shetland is different. And I have some reason to suppose it is. I finally dared to visit Midsomer Norton in Somerset last autumn, and found it ordinary and unexciting. No killers on the prowl. No bodies. Nobody took me hostage. Maybe - just maybe - Shetland is also similarly quiet and humdrum, so that I could go there and not get dragged into some dangerous crime investigation that will threaten my very life. Nor get blown up, as I fear Tosh may have.

I'm really hoping that this is only another cliff-hanger, and that Tosh made it. After all, caravans are not built like tanks. They are relatively flimsy, with feeble locks, and I would have thought that any desperate person would be able to force the door with a good kick. But even if she got out, I don't see how she could have got far enough away before the bomb exploded. Not to merely dust herself off. She would probably have been caught in the blast. So a hospital case, but alive and hopefully not too damaged.

Besides, there was a developing sub-plot involving her. She had just had a baby with her live-in boyfriend. The wee bairn ought not to lose his mother when only a few months old. But in addition the boyfriend - lightweight and unreliable, I thought, when I had a good look at him in the last series - was not taking his fatherly duties seriously enough, and was becoming distracted by the attentions of an old female friend. Tosh was just beginning to see that she had a worrying problem on her hands, and I thought the remaining episodes would reveal how she coped. Why waste a story-line like that?

I have liked Tosh very much indeed, and her apparent death is really upsetting. She deserves better. She joined the series early on, as an officer from Glasgow hoping to make a fresh start in Shetland, and although a little wayward at first, she found her feet and was doing really well. A while back she had a dreadful experience, getting raped when back in the Sinful City during an investigation into a gangland boss. Gradually she had recovered from that. The baby was indeed strong evidence that she had at last felt ready to trust a man again.  

But now this. Surely, if she were going to leave the series, she would bow out in a nice way - on a well-deserved promotion perhaps - to live happily ever after. And not simply blown to bits. 

Of course, it's well-known that Jimmy Perez himself leaves after the present series ends. What then will be the manner of his departure? What beats a bomb?

Maybe the entire cast will be killed off. I'm reminded of the final episode of the late 1970s/early 1980s sci-fi TV series Blake's Seven, when in the course of five minutes or so everyone got zapped in a shoot-out - apart from the two main characters, who were left eyeing each other. But you guessed that mutual zapping would have taken place after a last cynical 'I-love-you-really' quip or two. Another surprise ending, anyway. One friend opined that the BBC had simply decided not to fund the series any longer, and the director, having only just got that message, had shouted out to the cast 'Money's run out! Kill yourselves!' It certainly looked like an unrehearsed, spur-of-the-moment, not-in-the-script finale.

So maybe the police station in Lerwick will be attacked by a giant kraken, its tentacles seizing every character. Or aliens will descend, and melt them. Or they all take early retirement in a cracking severance deal. Who can say?  

I am agog to see the next episode on Wednesday, two night ahead. I'll be in North Yorkshire by then. I hope that I can stream it using 4G. 

SEQUEL

Mobile Internet was good at Gilling West, just off the A66 in North Yorkshire. I tethered the laptop to my phone and watched the next episode. Phew! Tosh got out - just. Both hands hurt, and very traumatised, but still a going concern. I was extremely relieved.  It could have spoiled my holiday!

Interestingly, a clue as to Jimmy Perez's exit to come. He has a late-night discussion fuelled by bourbon whiskey with an artist who offers an analysis, and draws attention to how Jimmy's job - policing - is getting in the way of giving his all to the people he loves. He may well dwell on that, and eventually conclude that it's time to get out. Although how you can ever stop being a policeman eludes me.