SHOCKED Shetland viewers have branded the show “mad” after it returned to the BBC with a very dramatic first scene.

Crime fans were left on the edge of their seats within the first two minutes of series nine kicking off.

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The first episode began with DI Ruth Calder, played by Ashley Jensen, sitting in a kitchen while wearing a coat and scarf.

Seconds later, it was revealed she was looking down the barrel of a gun, held by a mad man called Malcolm Kidd.

DI Calder asks him: “Do you not think we should cover him up, eh?

“Let’s give your brother a bit of dignity.”

With the BBC drama already reaching fever pitch, the camera suddenly revealed a dead man lying face down in a pool of blood.

Fans couldn’t believe their eyes, with many flocking to social media to share their shock.

One viewer wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Well that’s some opening, right into a mad scene.”

Another added: “Not bothering with the slow build up then?”

And a third chimed in: “An interesting opening for Shetland tonight!”

As the episode unfolded, viewers learned that the dead man was Malcolm’s brother Andrew Kidd.

Malcolm shot him in the head with a gun, with it emerging that Andrew had been sleeping with his fiancée.

Shetland is now in its 9th series, having first hit the small screen in March 2013.

Ashley took over the lead role from Douglas Henshall in series 8, after he bowed out of playing DI Jimmy Perez since the first episode.

Last week, Ashley told The Sun’s TV Mag that a 10th series of the crime drama has also been commissioned.

The actress said: “I thought, I can’t afford to think, is this going to run for another series or another series or whatever?

“I just thought six episodes of a self-contained show and that’s great.

“So to be commissioned for two series on the back of that with seven point something million viewers was great.

“It was huge. It was a real positive.”

Shetland series guide

By Conor O’Brien

Crime drama Shetland debuted on BBC One back in 2013. With over a decade under its belt, here is a look at the show’s journey so far.

Douglas Henshall led the cast in the first seven series, playing DI Jimmy Perez. However, the actor’s departure from Shetland was announced in 2022.

In his place, Ugly Betty alum Ashley Jensen took over, playing newcomer DI Ruth Calder.

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• Series One: Ederly Shetlander, Mima Wilson is found murdered. DI Pérez and the team suspect the murder is linked to the Haldane family (to whom Mima was related) and the Shetland bus.
• Series Two: DI Pérez and the team investigate the murder of teenager Catherine Ross. Along the way, they find links to local recluse Magnus Bain – and a seven-year-old’s unsolved disappearance two decades earlier.
• Series Three: A young man disappears on a ferry crossing and a small boy ends up in intensive care after overdosing on Ecstasy. DI Pérez and the team become convinced the two events are linked.
• Series Four: Convicted murderer Thomas Malone returns to Shetland, prompting DI Pérez and the team to reopen a 23-year cold case. That case concerns Lizzie Kilmuir, who had been found strangled to death in a lime kiln. However, things take a turn when a local journalist is killed, in apparently a copy of Lizzie’s murder.
• Series Five: After severed parts are discovered on a Shetland beach, the victim is determined to be a Nigerian man who’d been looking for his sister. However, the investigation leads Pérez to suspect the murder has ties to a human trafficking ring.
• Series Six: A local lawyer is shot dead on the day of Pérez’s mother’s funeral. The team focus on two of the lawyer’s case – but are impeded by a teenager running a crime blog.
• Series Seven: In Pérez’s final series on Shetland, the run starts as he is cleared of wrongdoing by the police tribunal. In his final act, Pérez lets an innocent man – who had been due to be executed for allegedly killing an American citzen – go free while he resigned from the police.
• Series Eight: DI Ruth Calder, who grew up in Shetland, takes over Pérez’s old role. In one of Calder’s first cases, a young woman flees to Shetland after witnessing a police informant being murdered by hitmen in London.

The Ugly Betty and Extras star added that she was “very much thrilled” to be continuing in the show.

Meanwhile, returning regulars include Steven Robertson as Detective Sandy Wilson and Lewis Howden as Sergeant Billy McBride.

Harry Potter actor Ian Hart has taken on the role of Euan Rossi in Shetland’s new series.

Shetland airs on BBC1 and is available on iPlayer.

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MARRIED At First Sight UK star Georges Berthonneau dropped a massive hint about his relationship with Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu two months ago.

Georges, who starred in last year’s series of MAFS UK, revealed he was enjoying a “dream” romance with someone new in September.

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It came after he also asked Ekin-Su to ‘call him’ during a podcast chat.

The Sun has now exclusively revealed that Georges, 31, is dating the 30-year-old Turkish actress, who found fame on Love Island.

Fresh from her bitter break-up with Davide Sanclimenti at the beginning of the year, it is the first time Ekin-Su has been linked to a new man.

Georges let slip his relationship during an interview about his life following his split with wife Peggy seven months previously.

He said he had left overwhelmed by the sheer number of messages from women wanting to date him, but used his “intuition” to find his new girlfriend.

Georges told The Sun two months ago: “For however long I was single, I basically had the biggest conveyor belt ever. It was frightening. It was like, ‘Oh, my God! This is ridiculous’.”

Speaking about his new lady, who we now know to be Ekin-Su, he continued: “I just listened to my heart.

“I met the individual. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but you know, it’s just been everything that I’ve dreamed of.”

The Sun revealed on Wednesday how Georges and Ekin-Su are dating each other.

Ekin-Su was spotted heading to the gym with the sports rehabilitation practitioner and content creator, although they tried to avoid being spotted together.

The new couple arrived in Georges car but they headed to work out in the gym separately.

This is the first time Ekin-Su has been spotted with a new man since she parted ways with Davide in January.

The couple had won the 2022 series of Love Island but they had a tricky time after leaving the villa.

The on-off couple then finally called it quits a month before Ekin’s disastrous stint on Celebrity Big Brother.

She later told how Davide’s “endless deceit” led to the breakdown of their 18-month relationship.

Georges, meanwhile, got married to Peggy Rose on last year’s series of Married At First Sight UK.

However, Peggy announced their marriage was over on Valentine’s Day and she accused him of cheating on her. Georges vehemently denied her accusations.

Following their break-up, Georges admitted that he had his eye on Ekin-Su during a podcast interview.

Speaking on Wedding Mayhem, he looked at the camera and said: “Ekin-Su, give me a call.

“My number is…” Georges mobile number was then bleeped out.

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Yellowstone director Christina Voros has shed light on how the show plans to come to an end, despite its star Kevin Costner’s unexpected, premature exit earlier this year.

Ahead of the hit Western’s long-awaited return this month, Voros addressed how Costner’s character, John Dutton, remains an “essential component” to the show’s final episodes.

“John Dutton is still central,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “His presence is integral. I think to say any more than that would potentially compromise all the work that went into redacting the scripts!

“But I think the reason people are wondering, ‘Is he, isn’t he? Where is he, where is he not?’ is because he is the patriarch and his presence is an essential component to the story.”

Costner, who led Yellowstone as the Montana landowner and Dutton family patriarch for four seasons, announced he was departing the hit series in June.

“I just realized that I’m not going to be able to continue Season 5b or into the future,” he said in an Instagram video. “It was something that really changed me. I loved it, and I know you loved it. I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be returning.”

Early reports suggested that his exit was due to a falling out with the show’s creator, Taylor Sheridan, over scheduling conflicts allegedly caused by the actor’s desire to shoot his Western passion project, Horizon – An American Saga.

However, Costner later disputed these claims, saying that had been prepared and ready to shoot whenever he was required, but the production kept getting pushed back.

“I did it for five years, and I wanted to work more than once a year,” he said on a June episode of the Today Show. “We lost an entire year at one point, and I thought, that can’t happen again.”

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He added that he “would love to go back” to Yellowstone, albeit “under the right circumstances.”

Yellowstone returns with the second part of its fifth and final season on November 10 on Paramount+ at 8pm ET/PT.

While the series is coming to an end, Sheridan isn’t done expanding the world of Yellowstone. In fact, he recently announced that Michelle Pfeiffer is set to lead the forthcoming Yellowstone sequel series The Madison.

The new series will follow a family of New Yorkers who relocate to the Madison River valley in central Montana. It is set to deal with themes of grief and human connection.

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Netflix have teased a big mystery for the forthcoming final season of fan-favourite, Stranger Things.

The record-breaking drama features an ensemble cast including Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, David Harbour as Jim Hopper and Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers.

The show, which follows a series of paranormal events taking place in an American town in the 1980s, is back for its fifth and final segment in 2025, the streamer confirmed earlier this year.

In a new video shared to their social media page on Wednesday afternoon (6 November), the name of each new episode was revealed.

Titles for each episode often shed light on key events, with the first episode of the first season called “The Vanishing of Will Byers”, setting the scene for the plot of the entire show.

They can take on obscure names based on a theme identifiable to fans, for instance “The Flea and the Acrobat” in which the gate between dimensions was first revealed.

Fans dived deep into speculation, particularly after one of the forthcoming episodes had part of its title omitted.

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The titles are as follows:

The Crawl

The Vanishing Of [Omitted]

The Turnbow Trap

Sorcerer

Shock Jock

Escape From Camazotz

The Bridge

The Rightside Up

In the show’s characteristic Eighties style lettering along with its instantly recognisable music by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, the teaser was accompanied by the tagline, “In the fall of 1987… one last adventure begins.”

“‘The Vanishing Of…’ was such a massive tease,” wrote one fan, as speculation centred on whether Eddie Munson, played by Gladiator II star Joseph Quinn, could be set to return, or whether a main character will vanish in a repeat of the show’s first episode.

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Fans were also left emotional at the name of the final episode called “The Rightside Up”, as opposed to the horror the characters endured in the evil-ridden “Upside Down”.

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“My God, The Rightside Up is the best thing I’ve heard,” wrote one person on social media.

Another added, “Sobbing my eyes out” as fans left crying and tearing up emojis.

Creators Matt and Ross Duffer said that they had created a 25-page document detailing the mythology of the Upside Down when they created the show, in an interview with Tudum.

“We were like, ‘We know what’s going on in the Upside Down, more or less, but we want it to be unknowable. We want it to be mysterious,’ ” Matt Duffer explained.

“But they were like, ‘Yeah, but can you write it down?’ And so we wrote it all down.”

Meanwhile, Ross said the final season would finally tie up all loose ends.

“The last remaining questions that are answered in that document, we’ve punted a couple of those to have some big reveals in Season 5,” said Ross Duffer during Geeked Week in June 2022. “And that’s really going to affect what Season 5 is about.”

Stranger Things 5 will be released in 2025.

STRANGER Things fans have the bittersweet knowledge that while a new series of the show is coming out in 2025, it will be the last one.

The fifth and final season of the mega-hit teen horror has sparked intrigue among fans — here we look at possible links between episode six and the book A Wrinkle in Time.

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The sixth episode of series five of Stranger Things is called Escape From Camazotz.

This title suggests a fascinating connection between the popular Netflix series and Madeleine L’Engle’s classic 1962 children’s novel.

A Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in Time is a beloved science fiction-fantasy novel that has captivated readers for generations.

The story follows young Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin O’Keefe as they embark on an interplanetary journey to rescue Meg’s father.

Their adventure takes them across the universe, including a visit to the mysterious planet Camazotz.

Camazotz

In L’Engle’s novel, Camazotz is portrayed as a dystopian planet where conformity reigns supreme and everything is miserable thanks to The Black Thing — a powerful force of evil threatening the universe.

The planet’s inhabitants live under the oppressive control of a disembodied brain called IT, which possesses powerful telepathic abilities.

IT enforces a strict uniformity, causing the people of Camazotz to behave in a mechanical, almost robotic manner.

Mayan mythology

Interestingly, the name Camazotz also has roots in Mayan mythology.

In these ancient tales, Camazotz is depicted as a bat-like monster associated with death and the underworld.

The name literally translates to “death bat” in the K’iche’ language.

Connections between A Wrinkle in Time and Stranger Things

The parallels between A Wrinkle in Time and Stranger Things are striking, suggesting that the reference to Camazotz in the episode title is no accident.

Both narratives feature young protagonists facing otherworldly threats and exploring alternate dimensions.

The concept of mind control, central to Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time, resonates strongly with themes in Stranger Things.

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The series has consistently portrayed the Upside Down’s monsters attempting to control humans, mirroring the way IT dominates the inhabitants of Camazotz.

Stranger Things is famous for its numerous references to popular culture, particularly from the 1980s.

For the fifth series it looks like the writers may have gone a little further back for inspiration.

While the exact nature of the connection remains to be seen, the deliberate reference to Camazotz suggests that fans of both Stranger Things and A Wrinkle in Time are in for a treat.

The crossover between classic literature and modern television demonstrates the enduring power of storytelling.

Fans are eagerly awaiting the release of the final season to see how this literary connection unfolds on screen and contributes to the series’ grand finale.