‘Shetland’ Star Douglas Henshall Announces Shooting Date For Season 5 On Twitter

Shetland star Douglas Henshall announced on Twitter that the popular BBC show has a script for Season 5 and that they start shooting in early July. Henshall, who plays DI Jimmy Perez let fans know that the new season is a winner, following up the serious drama of Season 4.

“This is happening. We start shooting July 9th. It’s very good.”

In March it was announced that there would be a fifth season of Shetland, which is filmed on the Shetland Islands off of Scotland, reports Express. Fans of the show were still reeling from the shock of the season finale when BBC Scotland tweeted that the show would be returning.

“Great news! Our drama series #Shetland will return to @BBCOne.”

There is no date yet for the unveiling of Shetland Season 5, but it’s a safe guess that it will be early in 2019. The last two seasons made their debut in January or February of each year, so fans will probably get more Jimmy Perez by February 2019.

Sources close to the show have confirmed that Season 5 will bring a new case to the Shetland crew, but writer David Kane says it will diverge away from the novels of Ann Cleeves.

“Now that we have a longer format for Shetland we can’t use the books as source material, as we’d need to change so much it would not do them justice (and probably upset the fans of the novels) so it is better to create new stories while maintaining the essence of Ann’s books and characters.”

This is happening. We start shooting July 9th. It’s very good. pic.twitter.com/EHUcfoh4Fq

— Douglas Henshall (@djhenshall) May 29, 2018

And it’s not just international fans of the show who are happy about the return of Shetland because the show has been a real boost to the tourism of the island town, reports Herald Scotland. Almost one-third of the people who visited Shetland last year said they were influenced by the show to make the trek to the island (despite the fact that the BBC series often features horrible, fictional crimes).

“A new survey commissioned by Shetland Islands Council and VisitScotland showed 28 percent of visitors were inspired to head north after seeing the remote islands on TV.”

In the United Kingdom alone, over 4 million people watched the final episode of Season 4 live. When tourists visit Shetland, they often ask about where to find certain landmarks from the show, including the waterside house where Perez lives.

Local actor Steven Robertson says that the show is a boost for the area due to the amazing vistas.

“You get an hour a week for six weeks… every time the camera swings across a beach or looks out over a cliff, that is Shetland.”