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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Wallander

Just checking in here with a review of Wallander, a superb BBC series so far consisting of six 90-minute episodes over two seasons.   The character is a constable in Sweden, hero of twelve novels written in Swedish by Henning Mankel (nine of which have been translated into English), and a slew of movies and television dramas in Sweden.

I haven't yet seen any of Wallander other than in the BBC series, and those six episodes, each of which has the feel of a movie, are just wonderful.   We get a really original, refreshing (though not upbeat) detective series, with a pace and feel I've never seen before on American or British television.

Among the highlights -
  • Kurt Wallander almost always feels directly, personally responsible for the murders he investigates with his team, and he's sometimes right
  • the cinematography of the Swedish countryside is breathtaking, and in a class by itself as far as what we usually see in even the best visual presentations on television
  • the Swedish police are a lot less trigger-happy than we Americans, but they're not afraid to use lethal force when necessary, and what we get is a very good take on an alternate mode of policing
  • the Swedish public, at least in the Wallander series, are a lot more disrespectful of the police than the average citizen in the US and (from what I can tell from British series) in the UK, which also makes for an unusual dynamic.
Kenneth Branagh plays Wallander memorably, and the acting is excellent all around.  If you'd like a detective you've truly never met before, you're in for a treat with Wallander (available on DVD from Netflix).


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1 comment:

petercmoore said...

Branagh's BBC series is good, but it pales in comparison to the original Swedish Wallanders, which have been showing in the UK alongside the Britsh version.

Well worth hunting down the Swedish-language ones if you enjoyed the BBC version.

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