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MovieMail's Review
The perpetually hangdog Krister Henriksson stars as the eponymous detective in these seven feature-length TV films. They are Scandinavian crime thrillers at their best, says Peter Wild.
Viewers turned on to Scandinavian crime drama by the recent showing of The Killing on BBC4 need look no further than this boxset of the first seven episodes of Wallander, featuring the perpetually hangdog Krister Henriksson as the eponymous detective looking to solve crimes whilst seemingly carrying the weight of the world on his ageing shoulders for their next televisual feast. Unlike the anglicised BBC version featuring Kenneth Branagh (which showed us a Sweden straight out of the watercolours of Anders Zorn), Henriksson’s Wallander unravels against a backdrop of muted browns and industrial greys, leaving us to be more forcefully gripped by the twists and turns of the narrative.
The series begins with Before the Frost – the only episode of Henriksson’s Wallander to be wholly adapted from a Henning Mankell novel (albeit a novel that was supposed to be the first of a series of Linda Wallander novels – Mankell scrapped the idea after the death by suicide of Johanna Berglund, the actress who plays Linda Wallander in these shows). In fact, these shows form an interesting bridge between the movie adaptations of the Wallander character, which starred Rolf Lassgard, and the Branagh adaptation, in that we have far more of a family dynamic on display here with Wallander and his daughter Linda solving crimes together, something which has not really happened in the novels. This is best seen in The Darkness in which Wallander takes a back seat to Linda.
A further interesting twist, and what sets Wallander apart from crime series like, say, Cracker or A Touch of Frost, are the crimes that Wallander investigates – from a cult looking to ethnically cleanse morally loose women in Before the Frost to a man who is apparently kicked to death by a horse in The Tricksters. The ambition on display is occasionally surprising. Certainly when you watch Mastermind, the seventh outing here, in which a colleague’s daughter is kidnapped, the denouement could come straight out of a big budget Hollywood crime shocker. The novels themselves may now have finished (the tenth and final Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, was published earlier this year) but the TV show demonstrates that there is some way to go for the character yet – and the fact that there are a load more episodes waiting to make it to DVD only confirms this.
Cast - Krister Henriksson, Fredrik Gunnarsson, Mats Bergman, Stina Ekblad
DVD Details
Certificate:
15
Publisher:
Arrow E1
Region:
2
Length:
630 mins
Cat No:
FCD509
Format:
DVD Colour
Subtitles:
English
DVD Extras
4 discs
Film Description
Broadcast to critical acclaim on the BBC and available for the first time on DVD, these seven self-contained 90 minute films starring Krister Henriksson are Scandinavian crime thrillers at their best: realistic, gripping dramas that illuminate the dark corners of modern society. Contains Before the Frost, The Village Idiot, The Brothers, The Overdose, The African, Mastermind and The Tricksters.
Created by bestselling author Henning Mankell, detective Kurt Wallander is an intense and headstrong maverick, who is prone to eating poorly, sleeping irregularly and drinking too much. With unorthodox methods of working and his blunt approach, Wallander relies on instinct and experience and doesn’t shy away from using illegal means to solve crimes.
