Wonderful ‘Wallander’
-
- May
- 15
Just another shout-out to “Masterpiece Mystery!” and its latest series, “Wallander,” with Kenneth Branagh as the tormented Swedish detective. I liked it from the first. But now it’s really growing on me.First off, the setting, southern Sweden in summer, is unusual — like a combination of the Midwest and New England. It’s both stark and lush. (As for the lack of Swedish accents by the British cast, I can’t say it’s a deal-breaker. I mean, we assume actors of this quality can do those accents. The lack of Swedish accents combined with the Swedish setting creates something of a parallel universe that heightens our awareness that we’re watching a crime series.)
Then there’s the supporting cast, somewhat unfamiliar on this side of the Atlantic but uniformly excellent. It includes Tom Hiddleston as Martinsson, one of Wallander’s more recalcitrant sidekicks. (There’s an interesting subtext here, because Branagh is prepping the upcoming “Thor” movie for Marvel Studios, and Hiddleston has been mentioned as a possible lead. With his exquisite bone structure and curly blond locks, he’d be dreamy.)
What I really love, though, is the raw emotional realism of the characters. In Sunday’s “Firewall” episode (9 p.m., THIRTEEN locally), Wallander’s daughter Linda (Jeany Spark) puts her all-work-and-no-play dad on a social networking site, which leads to a relationship with a very attractive woman (Orla Brady) and some unexpected results. This episode contains one of the most realistically violent death scenes I’ve ever seen. Usually when someone dies of a gunshot on TV, it’s much more antiseptic. You don’t hear the words sputtering and see the life gushing out of them.
In “One Step Behind,” which airs May 31 after a Memorial Day Weekend break, the father-daughter relationship comes to the fore, and we see how much of a mother Linda is to her dad. We also realize that for all his insights and intuitions, Wallander is in some ways clueless.
This episode unravels an intriguing case wrapped inside which is one of life’s great truths — sometimes we’re too busy to notice just how much we mean to others until it’s too late.
Thoughts like these make “Wallander” a cut above the rest.
This entry was posted
on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 3:43 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
