News / Davie gets own sitcom
THE MAKERS of the hit BBC One show ‘Shetland’ have announced that a well-known popular local figure is to star in his own spinoff sitcom following a scene-stealing acting role in the murder mystery series.
Music promoter Davie Gardner’s 20-second cameo was one of the major talking points among islanders when ‘Shetland’ returned to the small screen in early March.
It now transpires that it was not just Shetlanders who were struck by the quality of his acting: one of the show’s senior producers said Gardner had delivered a performance which “transcended the background role he was given, and may well have redefined what it is to be an ‘extra’ in TV and film”.
The new sitcom, still in the early stages of planning, is being pitched to several broadcasters as a populist comedy called ‘Davie’ set in a small town.
Gardner is to play the main character, a taxi driver who wears only black and whiles away the working day by sharing his passion for classic rock music with passengers.
Other details are being kept under wraps for the time being, but Gardner said he was delighted to have been handed the new role, which it is believed takes the number of different jobs he has had into treble figures.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity for me career-wise, and a great chance to get Shetland better kent globally,” he told Shetland News. “Hopefully the writers will give me a good catchphrase into the bargain.”
In the first episode of Shetland’s second series, Gardner played an oil rig manager standing in the background as an offshore worker received some tragic news. One viewer described his performance as “magnetically powerful”.
Talking for the first time about the part, he explained: “I’d been helping the cast, crew and producers out with logistics since the pilot episode of Shetland.
“One day, completely out of the blue it has to be said, the director came over and asked if I fancied filling in as an extra.”
Had he ever acted before? “Never in my life. It was an entirely ad-hoc approach I took, to be honest wi dee. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
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