Ashley Jensen pays tribute to Tosh co-star ahead of BBC Shetland comeback: ‘Wonderful’
Shetland fans were delighted to hear the crime drama series would be returning, with Ashley Jensen back at the helm for the second time after replacing Douglas Henshall as Jimmy Pérez.
As well as Detective Inspector Ruth Calder, fans can expect to see Jensen’s co-star, Alison O’Donnell, making her comeback as Alison “Tosh” McIntosh.
The series is expected to be as twisty as ever, with the murder mystery series already promising some dramatic plots.
A BBC synopsis of the upcoming series reads: “A double missing persons case blurs the line between the personal and the professional, as Calder and Tosh are drawn into a labyrinthine investigation.
“When Tosh’s friend, Annie Bett, goes missing she suspects something is seriously wrong.
“Ruth Calder – now living in Shetland – has no time to recover from a life-threatening ordeal of her own, as together they set out in search of Annie and her young son, Noah.
“They discover that accountant Annie is estranged from her husband, Ian, and has been staying with mussel farmer John Harris and his two sons, Patrick and Fergus. Worryingly, there’s no sign of Annie there either.”
It seems like the two co-stars are able to find time to have fun away from the dramatic scenes though, and Jensen recently paid a sweet tribute to her on-screen colleague.
When asked if she had any memorable moments from filming the series, she replied: “Lots of memorable moments of locations and things, but I don’t want to give too much away!”
The Scottish actress continued: “Working with Alison every day is wonderful, we just get on like a house on fire. She’s one of these people where I feel as if I can’t remember ever not knowing her.”
Sharing one moment, the 55-year-old recalled: “The one memory I have is when production brought in two stunt women to do a running along the beach scene for us.
“It was a cold, sort of miserable day and they’d got the stunt double women in wigs and Calder coats and Tosh jumpers.
“But apparently, we ran along the beach and looked like we knew what we were doing, so we didn’t need the stunt people. So we were like ‘Yes!'”
As her character found her feet in her debut in the latest series, it seems Calder is finally putting down roots now.
When asked why her character’s decided to return to Shetland for good, Jensen explained: “Calder’s decided to return to Shetland because it almost felt like there was unfinished business there, or a sort of magnetic draw back home.
“She’s there to find out who she is which, I think, goes against all her previous instincts.
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“When she first came back during the last series, she thought that she’d be there to solve the case and then get away and get back to London, back to her life.
“But she’s experiencing that thing where home sometimes draws you back.”
Teasing the upcoming storylines, she described the series as having “many threads”.
“We jump back and forth in time – there’s a historical case, domestic relationships… There are so many different strands to the story and quite a lot of them are linked,” she added.
