Actor Steven Robertson has said that one of the things he loves most about filming in the Shetland islands where he was born and grew up is that he can speak in the Shetland dialect. When he uses the dialect and some Shetland words down south, nobody can understand him.
Douglas Henshall won the 2016 BAFTA Scotland award for best actor for his role as Jimmy Perez in Shetland (2013).
Despite the fact that the Shetland Islands are the most northerly place in the UK and can have very rain any month of the year, sprinklers were used to create fake rain in some of the scenes.
On 20th July 2022, the British Broadcasting Corporation announced that the award-winning crime drama will return for an eighth series in 2023 - but with a new lead. Douglas Henshall makes his final appearance as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez in series 7 which airs in 2022. Henshall explained that after the fifth series of the drama "David Kane and I decided we wanted to do two more series to complete the story of Jimmy Perez. So series 6 and 7 were commissioned together to give us time to wrap up Perez's story to a satisfactory end."
Filming often takes place in areas with landscape or buildings reminiscent of those on the Shetland Islands, such as Kilbarchan in Renfrewshire, Barrhead, where Henshall (Douglas Henshall) was born and grew up, Ayr and Irvine, North Ayrshire.