WALLANDER

Kenneth Branagh's world-weary cop Kurt Wallander looks simply a wreck at all times, like he'll just collapse in the middle of the room, leaving his co-workers to step gingerly around him.

Kenneth Branagh's cop Kurt Wallander is a refreshing addition to the crime scene investigator genre. Wallander is good at his job, but he is a fuck-up in his personal life. His wife is long gone, his adult daughter is estranged (though still pines for a glimmer of a possible normal relationship with her father), and he has a strained relationship with his own dad (David Warner) who is angry and slipping into senility. Basically, it is a gritty crime drama with gritty crimes to match the mood.

The Wallander episodes ("Sidetracked," "Firewall," and "One Step Behind") may be made for British television, but they are definitely of a high enough quality that they would have been satisfying as theatrical stand-alone films. The series is based on best-selling books by Henning Mankell, who yes, happens to be Swedish. In fact, one of the curious thing about Wallander is that he is a Swedish cop, and the stories take place in the Swedish town of Ystad. It is curious this fact is easy to forget: Most of the actors are British, and despite being filmed in Sweden, quite a lot of the landscape could pass for a generic UK. But if a character picks up a newspaper, it is written in the Swedish language. Huh.

Anyway. The grit of the stories reminded me of the frank, dark, and often wince-inducing violence (and implied violence) of the Prime Suspect series. But combine that with the most world-weary, exhausted, broken main character since Al Pacino rubbed his bleary eyes all through Insomnia. Branagh is very very good in Wallander, and he looks simply a wreck at all times, like he'll just collapse in the middle of the room, leaving his co-workers to step gingerly around him.

Each "episode" is really like a stand-alone 90-minute film, which is quite satisfying, like an instant trilogy. The subject matter is quite dark, basically a sleepy  part of Southern Sweden dealing for the first time with really shocking, modern big-city crimes (like, oh, you know, people getting killed and scalped, for instance... yikes!). The plots keep you guessing, and are written well enough that you don't have it all figured out by the end.

There are murmurs that there may be more Wallander episodes. From what I've seen so far, that would most definitely be something to look forward to!