I’m only ten years late to the party, but I’ve just started watching the BBC series Shetland. Based on the mystery novels by Ann Cleeves (which I guess I’ll have to read now), the stories are smart, suspenseful, and engrossing. The acting is also first-rate. But what really makes the show stand out is its setting—the barren, brooding, rugged landscape of the Shetland Islands, which, as I learned from Wikipedia, is the UK’s northernmost territory.
Like a lot of American Southerners who’ve spent their lives in hot places, I’ve always longed to move to a cooler land. As a kid, I loved watching British TV mysteries, partly because the atmosphere looked so soothing in the rainy cities and wind-swept towns where such shows are often filmed.
Yeah, I know—try telling a Brit that they should be grateful for their weather. But I was envious. Being one of those bookish, introverted people who has too much stimulation going on inside the brain, I always felt like I would be happier in a region where there isn’t so much stimulation outside. Where the sun isn’t so strong, the heat so oppressive.
Hm. Maybe I should move to Vermont.
Ash Clifton, Writer 