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Basic Facts:

Episodes: 3
Runtime: 90 min.
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Premiered: 2008

Format:

Series

Genres:

Crime, Thriller

Created By:

Richard Cottan, Richard McBrien

Actors:

David Warner, Jeany Spark, Kenneth Branagh, Richard McCabe, Sadie Shimmin, Sarah Smart, Tom Beard, Tom Hiddleston

Made In:

UK

Premiered at:

BBC

Swedish writer Hen­ning Mankell cre­ated Kurt Wal­lan­der in 1991 in the novel Face­less Killer. And so far, 10 nov­els and a col­lec­tion of sto­ries are pub­lished. And, so far a series of films was made in Swe­den, and also a TV series, also in Swe­den. But, the sto­ries and char­ac­ters also made it’s way into the BBC and the lat­est incar­na­tion of TV adap­ta­tions fea­tur­ing great Ken­neth Branagh in the role of Kurt Wallander.

Story

First sea­son had 3 fea­ture length episodes, that aired in 2008. Adapted nov­els were Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind. I didn’t read any of the nov­els, but report­edly, BBC adap­ta­tion is very faith­ful to the orig­i­nal nov­els, maybe a lit­tle darker and mood­ier. As the scripts go, they are done really well, all episodes have good bal­ance and pac­ing, slowly reveal­ing the mys­tery and lead­ing to solution.

Char­ac­ters

Kurt Wal­lan­der is police inspec­tor, work­ing in Swe­den, in city Ystad. Report­edly, Ken­neth Branagh approached Hen­ning Mankell per­son­ally, and wanted to play the role of Kurt from the start. And, I must say, that he is really great. Dark, trou­bled and dis­con­nected from his fam­ily, devoted to work first. All episodes work really good in deep char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and show­ing what dri­ves Kurt, his rela­tions to fam­ily (ill father and daugh­ter). Sup­port cast is also good, start­ing with Jeany Spark in the role of Kurt daugh­ter Linda and Sarah Smart as Anne-​Britt Hoglund, Wal­lan­der part­ner in the Ystad police station.

Pro­duc­tion

Branagh was not the first choice to play Kurt, and before him BBC con­sid­ered David Mor­ris­sey, Clive Owen and Michael Gam­bon among the oth­ers. But, Branagh meet Mankell who was already involved with BBC, and the deci­sion was made. Series is made in Swe­den, in Ystad.

Kurt Wal­lan­der

Many aspects of the pro­duc­tion were Angli­cized so that terms are closer to Eng­lish speak­ing audi­ence. Also, inter­est­ing fact is that Branagh and direc­tors didn’t watched Swedish movies and series, and they man­aged to offer a fresh view of the char­ac­ter and the series as a whole. First sea­son had very high rat­ings, and was very well received from audi­ence and crit­ics, and has won many awards. In turn, many coun­tries have pur­chased right to the series, expand­ing the success.

BBC plans to con­tinue with sim­i­lar treat­ment, try­ing to repeat the suc­cess of the Inspec­tor Morse series, with fea­ture length episodes

Con­clu­sion

This is another great BBC series, and I rec­om­mend it to all who love police pro­ce­du­rals. Review of sec­ond sea­son is com­ing soon, and also, I have man­aged to get my hands on the Swedish Wal­lan­der series from 2005–2006, and I will watch and review all 13 episodes of that series also.