Wallander presents the first three episodes -- Sidetracked, Firewall, and One Step Behind -- of the latest BBC crime mystery. Kenneth Branagh plays the middle aged Swedish detective Kurt Wallander with a sort of shabby chic. It is based on the Swedish noir novels by Henning Mankell.

The stories are set in the Swedish port of Ystad, which is located at the extreme south of Sweden, where the Baltic Sea joins the twin straits that join it to the North Sea, and eventually to the Atlantic. The shows are largely shot on location in Ystad itself, and its immediate surrounds. For American audiences, this should be a rare treat to see the harsh northern coastline regions, and experience some of the bizarre weather that occurs this far north. For me, however, it was a trip down memory lane.

I grew up in Northern England, in a town about 500 miles due west of Ystad, in a very similar small seaport on the cold North Sea. The bare, ice-swept mountains, the sparse pinewoods, the reedy beaches and the grey rolling seas all looked very familiar to me. Even the town itself has the same industrial port meets tourist trap feel, and the same blocky squat architecture needed to survive the brutal winters. The weather too seems quite realistic. The deadly, but almost comic, gunfight in woodlands during a fog so dense that the participants are forced to fire at sounds, reminded me a lot of standing huddled in a doorway, waiting to hear an approaching bus that I could not see, in just such a coastal fog. In another scene, when Wallander leaves the police station at 4.30 AM on a summer morning, I was not at all surprised that it was full daylight outside.

The show takes its cue from the bleak, drab, and extremely stark region. The characters dress in mute shades, with scarcely a red or blue in sight. The buildings are blunt, plain, and nondescript. The inside sets are minimalist, barren and sterile. The show is simply spoken in English, with no attempt at accents or cutesy phrases, ja. This works well.

Branagh's Wallander is sultry, melancholy and pensive with dark moods and undertones, which render anger into a sullen glow, and joy to a mirthless smile. Branagh's portrayal dominates the screen, like a dormant volcano dominates a landscape. With few words, and fewer gestures, he lets us see the inner forces of duty and honor that drive this grim, pragmatic man. Branagh is one of the most talented actors of our time, and he shows it in a virtuoso performance.

For the shows sake, it is fortunate that Branagh can act, for Wallander is in almost every scene. The rest of the cast is, like the sets, reduced to minimalist proportions. It is as if they too are just props: inanimate, almost invisible puppets, merely there to set the scene. His colleagues are almost as nameless as they are characterless. Without the credits, you would be hard pressed to know a name. Mind with names like Hoglund, Holgersson and Hokberg, they are not that easy to keep straight. Only Jeany Spark as Linda Wallander, Kurt's adult daughter, stands out as a fully-fleshed, three-dimensional character. Coincidentally, she is also the only one allowed to wear bright colors.

As to the three 90 minute stories, they are totally different save in their unrelenting tone of tragedy and despair. At their most cheerful best, they rival the gaiety of a close friend's funeral. The second show, Firewall, is a plot that could have been easily ripped from virtually any episode of Morse. Lines blur, and sometimes it seems that the villain is the hero, and that the best course or action is for the police to do nothing. The plots are contrived, interweaved conundrums, with villains going to extraordinary lengths to achieve dubious and unclear goals.

Despite this contrivance, it is in the plots that this show fails. Perhaps I watch too many mysteries. Perhaps, as a sometime mystery writer myself, I recognize too easily the tricks of the trade. For whatever reason, there was never a moment in any show that I did not know what was going on, and not a single scene held even an instant of surprise. Instead, they plodded toward their conclusion with the stately gait of a hearse.

However, this review does contain a surprise, of sorts, because I am recommending Wallander and giving it 4 stars. Despite the dismal landscape and cardboard-cutout characters, this show works. The end may be predictable, but it is, in its way, just as unnecessary as everything else. This is all just a stage, a setting in which Branagh can perform, and he delivers a performance of subtle intensity rarely seen on TV, British or otherwise.

* * *

Even though it is a TV show, the violence and subject material make it unsuitable for kids.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age