The scarf is back - Ashley Jensen returns for second Shetland mystery

Ashley Jensen returns as DI Ruth Calder in the ninth season of crime drama Shetland

TV detectives seem to always have a "thing".

Columbo had the beige trench coat, Kojak loved a lollipop and for CSI: Miami's Horatio Caine it was shades and a corny one-liner.

For Scots actress Ashley Jensen, her character's schtick is altogether more practical.

She returns to TV screens as DI Ruth Calder for her second season of long-running drama Shetland, wrapped up in more warm coats and her trademark scarves ready to solve the latest island mystery.

Jensen, like her character, felt a draw back to Shetland

In series nine, she has moved back to Shetland and gets stuck into a double missing persons case.

But, filmed earlier this year, the experience this time around was a chillier affair.

"The weather was a challenge," she told BBC Scotland News. "I mean, I've known cold when I've been filming but this this was something else.

"This is filming when it’s so cold your fingers had stopped working. We had heat pads in our pockets, our underwear and taped to our backs.

"We even had to put our hands in hot water in between takes to literally thaw them out. It's the only thing that would bring the feeling back into my fingers."

The new series sees Calder putting down roots.

Jensen said: "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.

"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."

The same could be said in real life, as Jensen was happy to get back on the flight to the islands.

'Half cup of tea'

"I was very excited to be getting on the wee plane off to Shetland again with my half a cup of tea and my caramel wafer.

"Half a cup of tea, because there’s often turbulence and you can't get a full cup of tea because it'll spill, which I thought was quite funny," she said.

And she felt Shetland enveloping her.

"It’s the whole landscape, I mean the real star of the show is Shetland and the Shetland Isles…it's an inimitable place."

She found the landscape arresting and breathtaking.

"Obviously, when I did my first series, I didn't know whether I was ever going to go back there, so I felt like I had to rush around buying Shetland jumpers and puffin poo and things like that, just in case."

Behind the scenes, the cast were struggling to keep warm

Jensen, 55, who was born in Annan in Dumfriesshire, got her big break when she starred alongside Ricky Gervais in Extras in 2005.

She went on to appear regularly in US TV series Ugly Betty before returning to the UK with roles in shows such as Agatha Raisin and Catastrophe.

In 2019 she reunited with Gervais in the Netflix comedy series After Life.

Last year Shetland's leading man Douglas Henshall, who played DI Jimmy Perez, departed, opening the door for the first female lead.

The series, produced by Silverprint Pictures, and originally based on award-winning novels by crime writer Ann Cleeves, attracted an average of seven million viewers across its run.

DI Ruth Calder and DI Alison McIntosh join forces again to solve a close-to-home missing persons case which case blurs the line between the personal and the professional

Also returning is Alison O'Donnell as DI Alison "Tosh" McIntosh.

The pair have become a formidable crimefighting duo and have become firm friends off screen.

Jensen said. "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.

"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!'"

The latest six-part Shetland murder-mystery returns for a brand new series on BBC iPlayer and BBC One on Wednesday 6 November at 21:00.