Wallander

 

We have been having fun with the Wallander Series from Masterpiece Theater because it is available on Netflix. The series we like has Kenneth Branagh who does drama very well with his Shakespearean background. I have not read the books written by Henning Mankell, nor have I seen other productions of the series such as the one with Swedish actors.  It is about a Swedish detective who deals in dreary murder mysteries, but it is a very compelling mystery series. The environment is very dark, depressing and moody. The people are very somber and they seem so depressed and almost afraid to be cheerful.

I don't know why, but it is almost over the top and makes me smile because it works so hard to set a dreadful atmosphere. We always laugh when his cell phone rings because it is such an annoying ring tone. It is like scraping finger nails over a chalk board. It just makes my skin crawl.

I highly recommend it because it seems such a relief when it ends and the perps are revealed and arrested or contribute to their own demise in the attempt. It is very absorbing and like a lot of British productions in that it isn't like action adventure American films. This series is about people and the endless nuances of human nature. Guns show up once in a while and sometimes a car is trashed, but it is mostly about the people and the agony of their lives because, after all, they live in a most depressing part of the world. At first I thought it was in Denmark, the land of Hamlet, but it is Sweden. All the same, those Scandinavian countries have the most wonderful vegetation, but it is always cloudy, foggy, rainy and dreary in the land of the midnight sun. Obviously,  the sun occasionally comes out to produce all those nice greens and flowers, but they rarely show it--that would be much too cheerful, I suppose. We all need a little vicarious pathos in our lives to remind us how much better we find our own existence.

I notice so many things in that series beyond the plot. Something has to be very absorbing for me to notice something other than the plot. I am such a plot junky. I am hooked on the presentations and trying to decide if I want to tackle the written version. We have seen three of nine episodes that are listed. I will have to see if there are more that we haven't found yet. They are very long for each episode but there are no commercials or breaks. I would be thrilled if they continued the series and produced a few more seasons with Kenneth Branagh.