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Wallander

Endeavour said:
What are BBC4 doing with this series? :confused:

They showed a couple/few when the Branagh ones were on. Then they started the whole series a few weeks later by re-screening the first ones and they got to about episode 9 and they just stopped. Now it's popped up again (series link on my box) and this week was episode one (burning swans again) next week it's episode three.

Although each episode is a separate story there is a continuity which needs to be maintained re: relationship of Linda with cop sidekick and Dad's jealousy etc.

The BBC seems to be flinging them at us willy nilly. :Grrr:
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They started the whole series again last Wednesday. BBC4, 11pm.
 
I've just started reading some Mankell books and can't quite believe how much he has based Wallander on Sjöwall and Wahlöö's infinitely superior Martin Beck books (the full series of which have been republished this year)
 
I really love the Swedish TV series, in fact I like it so much, I bought it on DVD off Discshop.se (I used an online Swedish-English translation site to get it right). All the episodes have English subtitles, the DVD box sets are all on special offer & the exchange rate actually worked out fine too. Highly recommended. :)
 
Got the whole Swedish series as well but am saving them up for the Christmas hols.

Always loved the books and whilst I enjoyed the BBC versions last year the Swedish ones (or rather the two I have seen) seem to have that extra something.
 
There's an episode on BBC4 on Saturday, Wallander fans. I'm assuming it's the ones held over from earlier in the year. :)
 
cheers Mrs T. Just checked my TV schedule, and episode ten ("The Castle Ruins") is on tonight in about 5 minutes- should be on the Iplayer by tomorrow.

I've been waiting about 3 months to see it, for the reasons Endeavour mentioned.
 
Just watched one on iPlayer about a truckload of dead refugees. Was alright and nicely shot. Preferred it to Mankell's rip-off books.
 
BlueSquareThing said:
That's the best one I've seen - shots when they open the container are really great shooting imo.
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Yeah, the male cop puking was really well done and some of some of the rural locations were really well chosen.

Not much of a plot though for a 90-minute episode. I'm really unconvinced by Mankell - all that social-commentary-in-a-police-procedural was done very very similarly in the 60s and 70s by Sjowall and Mahloo in their Martin Beck series.

Th similarity is uncanny. In the second Beck book, he goes off to solve a crime in Hungary. Wallander's second adventure also takes him behind the old iron Curtain in Latvia.
 
Has no one been watching the Branagh versions on Sunday nights? Actually are those new programmes or repeats/

I thought he was pretty good in it.
 
twistedAM said:
Has no one been watching the Branagh versions on Sunday nights? Actually are those new programmes or repeats/

I thought he was pretty good in it.
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I only caught last night's (the last of the Branagh sequence?) so all the characters and stuff were completely new to me, but I was impressed.

Enough to make me want to catch the earlier ones from that series anyway ....
 
Been away from here for a bit: Branagh's excellent. I was more impressed with the other characters than I remember being before, especially Anna-Britt.

Clever linking Faceless Killers with The Man who smiled as well.

Oh - was that the bloke who plays Peters in the Swedish version getting shot in Faceless Killers btw?
 
I liked the original Swedish ones I saw on i-Player, but not as keen on the UK version at all (well, I watched one of those).
 
I've recorded this to watch tonight.
I shall feel sad about the girl who played his daughter no longer being in it :(
RIP
 
I really enjoy the Mankell books, most of which I've read now, and I like the Swedish version on BBC4. Not too fond of the Branagh effort; it seems weird to me to go all the way to Sweden to make a film about Swedish cops, but shoot it in English with a British cast. Imagine if a Swedish team turned up and tried to remake Morse in Oxford, but in Swedish. On reflection, that could work. :facepalm:

Both the telly versions I've seen (there's yet another Swedish version I haven't seen anything of) take massive liberties with plots and characters in the original novels. Mankell's Wallander is much more of a lonely depressive in the books than in either TV versions. He's really in a dreadful rut after his wife Mona left him and attempts to rekindle his love life are pretty much still born. He spends a lot of time in the books effectively just looking out of the window and thinking sad thoughts. Drinking is an issue, as well as other dysfunctionalities. He loves his job but at times it takes him over.

By contrast the Swedish TV Wallander played by craggy Krister Henriksson has more fun and is a much less angry figure than Mankell's orginal character. Wallander in the books is often on the edge of losing control; he's more moderate in both the TV versions presumably because audiences don't find depressive angry men suitable for Sunday night viewing.

His daughter Linda becomes a police officer herself midway through the books and improbably ends up in the same police station as her dad. She's a much more fragile figure than in the Branagh adaptation which has her as an annoying yuppie rather than the insecure and quite damaged person she is in Mankell's series. I'm not sure how the Swedish TV version will deal with the tragic suicide of Johanna Sällström, the fine actress who played Linda in the its first run. Interestingly the new series has tried to draw a line by putting him in charge - (Mankel's creation in the book always has a boss) by allowing him to move house (in the books he finds it an impossibility) and putting him in a new police station. He even has a dog, which he certainly doesn't in the books I've read so far.

So there are lots of differences between telly efforts and the books. Do they matter? I went to a talk by Mankell a couple of months back in which he was asked which TV version he preferred. Tactfully he said he liked them all, but pointed out how difficult it was to adapt a book that has its protagonist cogitating quietly for long periods. For myself I like the Swedish TV version a lot more than the UK effort but the ultimate Wallander, with all his talent and limitations, is to be found in the books and if you like well written thrillers they're great.
 
hendo said:
I'm not sure how the Swedish TV version will deal with the tragic suicide of Johanna Sällström, the fine actress who played Linda in the its first run. Interestingly the new series has tried to draw a line by putting him in charge - (Mankel's creation in the book always has a boss) by allowing him to move house (in the books he finds it an impossibility) and putting him in a new police station. He even has a dog, which he certainly doesn't in the books I've read so far.
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Ditto re: how to deal with the death of the Linda actress. No mention of Linda's absence in the first episode of the news Swedish series.
Maybe they'll write her out of it as leaving after the death of Stefan in the last episode.
He does have a boss - she arrives halfway through the first episode, and turns out to be his neighbour, and to at least seemingly be romantically interested in him. Should turn out disastrously if the previous love interests are anything to go by.
 
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