As the new series of Shetland opens the camera is close up on the face of the crime drama’s newest recruit. DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen) is explaining what brought her north again after a spell back in London.

“They were never going to promote me again - not with my mouth,” she muses.

“Let’s face it, working for the Met, it’s hardly something to shout about these days, is it?”

She could be talking to a therapist or a coffee companion. Nothing much to see here you might think; let’s get cracking on the latest murder. At this rate Lerwick is going to be passed by downtown LA as a crime hotspot.

But then the camera pans out to reveal a shotgun pointed at Calder. That’s punch in the gut number one. Punch two is the swift cut to a body lying face down on the floor, sans trousers, sans dignity as the killer stands over him. Very Coen brothers.

Shetland is how the Coens might have started out had they been born in Milngavie rather than Minnesota. The show has gone on without them thanks to Paul Logue’s talents as a writer of tight-as-a-drum scripts, and is now on its ninth series. Pretty good going given the loss of a key character in Douglas Henshall’s Jimmy Perez, the saddest man on television. One of the hardiest too, forever shunning a bobble hat whatever the weather.

Calder will swathe herself in whatever’s going, which on this occasion was a fetching tartan scarf. For once she was outdone on the make-up front by DI Tosh McIntosh (Alison O’Donnell), who was on her way to a party when the call came in about the gunman and Calder.

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In the last series Calder and Tosh circled each other like the town mouse and the country mouse. There was no spark between them, which rang true then because Calder had been parachuted in and Tosh thought she was being pushed aside, but a thaw would be welcome now.

At the birthday party Tosh discovers an old acquaintance, Annie, is splitting from her husband. She wants some advice and an arrangement is made to meet the next day, but when Tosh gets to the address Annie is nowhere to be seen and she is not answering her phone.

A missing woman, a gunman, a hostage situation, and Tosh wearing lippy. And I bet it’s only Monday. By episode six all these threads must be woven together and then it is on to the 10th series, already commissioned. They don’t hang around on Shetland.

From this we can take it that Calder is hanging around. She’s not quite there yet as a character; the pieces don’t fit. One minute she is trying to connect with a gunman to prevent him being shot by police marksmen, the next she’s struggling to talk to a traumatised child. I suspect Calder is going to be a tougher nut to crack than Perez, which is no bad thing.

Shetland: Screened Wednesday and available on BBC1/iPlayer