the audience applauded

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Absolutely amazing

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This is one of those shows that I have planned to watch for ages since generally the praise for this show is high. I was surprised by what I found then, because this first season seems to be pretty weak in some key areas.The production values are not one of them; whether it be the locations, the cast, or so on – it is a good-looking show no doubt. The issue for me was that from the very start it seemed to rush to a place of darkness and despair for its world and characters. This is not to say that I needed it to take me on a longer journey to get there, but rather that it very much lays this on thick in every regard. So the specifics of events, the heavy hearts of the characters, the obvious use of music, and so on – all of it seems to be trying to create something rather than letting it come through organically. I have not seen the original series, so maybe this is how that is, and this version wanted to reproduce that out of the gate?The impact though is a season that didn't engage me. Branagh looks convincingly broken and tired, but it is very much a 'performance' and I didn't really get the character at a deeper level. Support is roundly good although mostly it is police-procedural 101. On this level, the actual crimes are not particularly strong; they are quite interesting but mostly the 'disconnected crimes' are clearly going to come together, and a few times the solutions are also quite clear and the viewer is a little ahead. Some specifics don't ring true in the writing whether it be the crime or the characters. It is hard to describe, but it did feel like it knew what it wanted to be, but didn't do the base foundation work to try to get there.I am probably wrong, since the vast majority of viewers seem to love the show, so I'll give season 2 a stab and see if it is different; however the first season was certainly a case of it being a polished disappointment.

A group of young people who are out for some thrills are gunned down by a non-descript shooter as they enjoy a picnic dressed in period clothes (it looks like the French Revolution but I have no knowledge of this). One of the kids that was supposed to be with them, wasn't able to go for various reasons. She is now overwhelmed with guilt and remorse. Wallander now must wade through a lot of sludge to get a handle on this person. Meanwhile, his taciturn partner is murdered in his apartment. He has some connection to these kids, but we don't know what it is. He proves an utter enigma. It turns out he is probably gay and Wallander is amazed he never knew this. Things become sticky when the woman who escaped harm is murdered after connecting with Wallander. It appears that someone has a vendetta against the Swedish cop, that he is somehow in the middle of all this. We are quickly immersed in the gay community and danger lurks there. A mysterious woman is at the center of all this and her identity is critical. There is some really lousy police work here and some rather homophobic stuff going on.

The setting in Ystad is superb, and Kenneth Branagh is his usual excellent self, but from a story standpoint, if compared with loads of other British series such as P.D.James, Sherlock Holmes, Midsommer Murders, Foyle's War, or Inspector Morse, Wallander is probably the dumbest cop on television. In more than one story, he leaves key witnesses unguarded who are subsequently murdered. And then he gets to feel guilty. In order to create what I term "artificial tension" in the last five minutes of this story, he misses a totally obvious clue to any viewer. One of his assistant detectives is even dumber and doesn't want to work very hard. Then, if you compare Wallander with American TV such as NCIS, NCIS LA, or Criminal Minds, the sense of "family" amongst the four detectives is very weak. There is no charm between them. So, you are ultimately left with Branagh doing an excellent job of sulking for 90 minutes, with his beautiful daughter trying to get him out of his continual funk. Unless I'm watching some action film (like James Bond) or the stupendous computer feats of NCIS, in which I do not expect realism, I ultimately have a problem with stories where tension is created because Wallander does stupid things like letting the key suspect walk out the back door of a restaurant on the pretext of going to the restroom while he just stands at the bar, and belatedly realizes what he has allowed to happen. Finally, the series is filmed with a Red One digital camera which compresses the image and does not restore it to its original full image.

A nice step back into form. Wallander finds a colleague, Svedberg, opening up about emotions and the police department where they work. He is quite soon found dead, and the more an over-worked and exhausted Wallander looks into the case, the more it seems to be connected with another, and it seems like a serial killer is loose. I found the parallel story-lines working very well together, and the cinematography, especially the use of light and focus, was really good. Wallander's persona blooms in this film, where it touches on his family life as in the first. Or rather, it touches the parts of him that seemingly wilt and make him very human; the emptiness that haunts him from within, branching out as he tries to solve the case is portrayed beautifully, not to mention how exciting this episode was. This last installment of the Wallander mini-series made me long for new episodes!