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Tosh, Sandy and Billy’s new guvnor has been confirmed by the BBC: Agatha Raisin star Ashley Jensen will head up the Shetland investigatory team as new character DI Ruth Calder in series eight of the Scottish crime drama. Calder is “a native Shetlander who returns to the isles after 20 years working for the Met in London.” She’s a fish out of water back in water then, and will presumably come with her own share of personal complications, grudges and history with the rest of the locals.
Jensen’s casting follows Douglas Henshall’s exit in the series seven finale, after the actor decided to leave the role of DI Jimmy Perez behind. Perez wasn’t – as some had predicted – blown up in an eco-terrorism plot, but allowed to walk away intact with love interest Meg on his arm. The Detective Inspector nobly sacrificed his career to save an innocent man from being sentenced to death in his homeland of America, and left his Shetland work-family behind to start anew somewhere he wouldn’t be running towards danger.
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Jensen joins the existing cast of Shetland, including Lerwick fan-favourites Alison O’Donnell, Steven Robertson, Lewis Holden and Anne Kidd as Tosh, Sandy, Billy and Cora – previously DI Perez’s team. In the BBC announcement, she promises “a different dynamic with Ruth amongst the regular characters, and a few more new interesting characters to enjoy.”
53-year-old Jensen is a familiar face on screen who’s been acting since the early 1990s. After roles in May to December, The Bill, EastEnders, Casualty among many others, she broke through in the part of Maggie in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s acting industry comedy Extras, and in the US in the regular role of Christina McKinney in Ugly Betty and Fran in Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s excellent Catastrophe. In 2014, Jensen took the role of PR-turned-PI Agatha Raisin in the long-running cosy crime series, and appeared in Ricky Gervais Netflix series After Life.
