Wallander (British TV series)
Wallander is a British television series that aired from 2008 to 2016. It was adapted from a Swedish series, based on the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels and starring Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous police inspector. It was the first time the Wallander novels have been adapted into an English-language production. Yellow Bird, a production company formed by Mankell, began negotiations with British companies to produce the adaptations in 2006. In 2007, Branagh met Mankell to discuss playing the role. Contracts were signed and work began on the films, adapted from the novels Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind, in January 2008. Emmy-award-winning director Philip Martin was hired as lead director. Martin worked with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to establish a visual style for the series.
This article is about the BBC programme starring Kenneth Branagh. For the Swedish television series starring Krister Henriksson, see Wallander (Swedish TV series).Wallander
Novels
Henning Mankell
Screenplays
Richard Cottan
Peter Harness
Richard McBrien
"Nostalgia" by Emily Barker
Martin Phipps
Vince Pope
United Kingdom
Sweden
English
4
12 (list of episodes)
Francis Hopkinson
Anne Mensah
Rebecca Eaton
Hans-Wolfgang Jurgen
Anni Faurby
Ole Søndberg
Kenneth Branagh
Andy Harries
Daniel Ahlqvist
Simon Moseley
Sanne Wohlenberg
Anthony Dod Mantle
Jan Jonaeus
Igor Martinovic
Lukas Strebel
Tony Cranstoun
Kristina Hetherington
Tim Porter
89 minutes
30 November 2008 –
5 June 2016
The first three-episode series, produced by Yellow Bird, Left Bank Pictures and TKBC for BBC Scotland, was broadcast on BBC One from November to December 2008. The second series was filmed from July to October 2009 and was broadcast in January 2010.[1] The third series was filmed in the summer of 2011 in Ystad, Scania, Sweden, and Riga, Latvia,[2] and aired in July 2012.[3] The fourth and final series was shot from October 2014 to January 2015 and premiered on German TV, dubbed into German, in December 2015. The final series aired in the original English on BBC One in May 2016. Critics have written positively of the series, which has won a Broadcasting Press Guild Award (Best Actor for Branagh) and six British Academy Television Awards, including Best Drama Series.
Characters[edit]
The series is based on Kurt Wallander (Branagh), a detective and police inspector in the small town of Ystad, Sweden. Branagh describes Wallander as "an existentialist who is questioning what life is about and why he does what he does every day, and for whom acts of violence never become normal. There is a level of empathy with the victims of crime that is almost impossible to contain, and one of the prices he pays for that sort of empathy is a personal life that is a kind of wasteland."[4] In the novels, Wallander regularly listens to opera in his apartment and his car. This signature hobby has been dropped for this adaptation; producer Francis Hopkinson believes it would make Wallander too similar to Inspector Morse, whose love of opera is already familiar to British viewers.[5] Branagh did not watch any of the Swedish Wallander films before playing the role, preferring to bring his own interpretation of the character to the screen.[6]
Wallander's team at the Ystad police station is made up of: Anne-Britt Hoglund (Smart), Kalle Svedberg (Beard), and Magnus Martinsson (Hiddleston). Of Wallander and Hoglund, Smart said, "Our relationship is based on this impeccable mutual respect which is all very Scandinavian and, actually, more interesting to play."[4] The team is joined at murder scenes by Nyberg (McCabe), a forensics expert. The team is overseen by Lisa Holgersson (Shimmin), Ystad's chief of police. Away from the police station, Wallander has a tempestuous relationship with his daughter Linda (Spark) and his father Povel (Warner), who Wallander discovers in Sidetracked has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Wallander's father spends his days sitting in an art studio, painting the same landscape repeatedly while in the care of his new wife Gertrude (Hemingway).
Broadcast[edit]
A public screening of Sidetracked was given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts on 10 November 2008, and was followed by a question-and-answer session with Philip Martin and Kenneth Branagh.[89] A gala premiere of Sidetracked was held in Ystad on 23 November, a week before it was broadcast in Britain.[90] Sidetracked's first British broadcast came on BBC One on 30 November, followed by Firewall on 7 December, and One Step Behind on 14 December. Episodes were simulcast on BBC HD.[91] BBC Four broadcast programmes and films to complement the series; the schedule included a documentary by John Harvey titled Who is Kurt Wallander, as well as the Swedish adaptation of the Linda Wallander novel Before the Frost, and Mastermind, an installment of the Mankell's Wallander film series starring Krister Henriksson.[8][92][93]
The series has already been sold to 14 countries and territories across the world, including TV4 Sweden, TV2 Norway, DR Denmark, MTV3 Finland, France on Arte, Canada, Slovenia, Australia, Poland, Lumiere Benelux and Svensk Film for its pan Scandinavian feed.[94][95] BBC Worldwide, the BBC's commercial arm, sold the series to further buyers at the Mipcom television festival in October 2008.[96] In the United States, PBS secured the broadcast rights through the co-production deal struck between its affiliate WGBH Boston and the BBC. It aired as part of WGBH's Masterpiece Mystery! in May 2009.[97] In advance of the broadcast, Branagh and WGBH Boston's Rebecca Eaton presented a screening of an episode at The Paley Center for Media on 29 April.[98] In Germany, ARD broadcast the first series episodes on 29 and 30 May, and 1 June 2009.[99] TV4 broadcast the first series in Sweden from 11 October 2009.[42]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
The series received a positive reception from critics, who praised both Branagh's performance and the character he played; in a preview of the BBC's Autumn season, Mark Wright of The Stage Online wrote that Branagh was "a good fit" for the character and had "high hopes for the success of [the] series".[101] Previewing Sidetracked, The Times's David Chater called Branagh "superb as Kurt Wallander", and the series "one of those superior cop shows in which the character of the detective matters more than the plot".[102] In a feature in The Knowledge, a supplement of The Times, Paul Hoggart called Branagh's performance "understated, ruminative, warm, sensitive and depressed" and wrote positively of the design and cinematography and concluded by writing that "Wallander is that rare treasure: a popular form used for intelligent, thoughtful, classy drama and superbly shot".[8] At the time the series was commissioned, Scottish author Ian Rankin expressed disappointment to The Scotsman that BBC Scotland was producing adaptations of Swedish literature; "My main caveat is that there's so much good, complex and diverse Scottish crime writing going on right now that I'd like to have seen BBC Scotland pick up on that".[103]
Reviewing Sidetracked after it aired, Tom Sutcliffe for The Independent called it, "often a visually dazzling experience, the camerawork as attentive to the contours of Branagh's stubbly, despairing face as it was to the Swedish locations in which the action took place or the bruised pastels of a Munch sunset". He praised Branagh's acting but felt the Wallander character was "shallower than the performance, the disaffection and Weltschmerz just another detective gimmick".[104] The Guardian's Kira Cochrane was also complimentary to Branagh, calling him "faultless", but was not impressed with the scenes between Wallander and his father, which she believed slowed the pace of the film, as she did not want to learn Wallander's entire backstory immediately. Like Sutcliffe, Cochrane praised the cinematography and was pleased that the ending "tied up nicely".[105] Andrew Billen of The Times wrote, "This distinctly superior cop show is both spare and suggestive, and brilliantly acted." He took time to adjust to Kenneth Branagh as Wallander, and found the warm blue skies of Sweden unexpected.[106] Billen's and Cochrane's opinions of the child abuse storyline differed; Billen believed that it was "used too often in fiction, but here it meant something",[106] though Cochrane called it a "familiar element".[105] In The Daily Telegraph, James Walton was disappointed with the revelation that the crimes stemmed from sexual abuse; "once quite a daring TV subject, now a rather clichéd short cut to the black recesses of the human heart". Walton, like others, was complimentary of Branagh, and concluded by writing, "The series still probably won't appeal to fans of Heartbeat, but if you fancy an undoubtedly classy antidote to the cosy cop show, you could do a lot worse."[107] The broadcast had an average 6.2 million viewers and 23.9% audience share.[108] The episode began with a peak of 6.9 million (25.4%) but dropped to 5.8 million (24.6%) at the end. 57.2% of the audience was from the upmarket ABC1 demographic and 6.1% were in the age 16–34 demographic. The average viewer rating was down 300,000 on the same timeslot in the previous week.[109] Final ratings, incorporating those who watched via DVR, was 6.54 million, making it the eighth-most-watched programme on BBC One that week.[110] An editorial in The Independent complained that the episode's closing credits ran too fast; a hundred names were displayed in 14 seconds.[111] Branagh called the speed of the credits "insulting". The actors' union Equity also complained to BBC director general Mark Thompson.[112]
Firewall was seen by 5.6 million (23% share), 600,000 viewers and one share point down on the previous week.[113] Final ratings boosted it to 5.90 million and the tenth-most-watched broadcast on BBC One that week.[110] In The Guardian, Sam Wollaston wrote, "with the greyness, the cold, the Scandinavian sadness, and a troubled Kenneth Branagh mooching around in the gloom trying to figure out who killed these people so horribly, it's all pretty perfect."[114] Andrew Billen wrote in The Times that Wallander and Ella's relationship not working out is conventional for a television detective drama, though liked how Wallander's depression "has grown out of the failure of his marriage and the experiences of his career".[115] On TV Scoop website, John Beresford wrote that the episode "went quickly downhill" from the murder of the taxi driver in the opening minutes; "Pedestrian plots, characters that wander aimlessly about with next to nothing to do or say, and a format that seems better fitted for radio than it is for television. By that I mean the endless shots where there's a someone on the left of the screen, someone on the right, and they stand there for hours tal...king...verrrry...slow...ly to each other with absolutely nothing else happening."[116] One Step Behind received overnight ratings of 5.6 million (22.4%).[117] Final ratings were recorded as 5.66 million, making it the week's twelfth-most-watched programme on BBC One.[110] David Chater's Times preview called Branagh "a masterpiece of vulnerability and despair". He wrote of the conclusion: "a climactic scene that has been done dozens of times in thrillers, on this one occasion it felt entirely believable".[118] The Daily Record named it "Best of this week's TV"[119] though it was criticised in The Herald; David Belcher called it "far worse than initially reckoned. Never has there been a less observant, more irritating fictional detective". Belcher hoped that no more adaptations would be made.[120]
In a review called "Wåll-and-ör– den äkta Wallander" (the title is first poking fun at Branagh's pronunciation of Wallander while at the same time calling the version the real or proper Wallander), Martin Andersson of southern Sweden's main daily newspaper Sydsvenskan was very positive to Branagh's interpretation of Wallander, and thought the BBC series to be of better quality than the current Swedish-language series. He emphasised that not only was Branagh's performance of higher quality than the current Swedish Wallander actor Krister Henriksson, but the BBC series really understood how to use the nature and environment of the Skåne province to tell the proper story and added that, as a person from southern Sweden, he recognised all the settings and they had never looked as beautiful as in this production.[121]
Awards[edit]
Branagh won the award for best actor at the 35th Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Awards (2009). It is his first major television award win in the UK.[122] The series was nominated for Best Drama Series but lost to The Devil's Whore.[122][123] The series, represented by Sidetracked, won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series. Richard Cottan, Branagh, Philip Martin and Francis Hopkinson are named as the nomination recipients.[124] At the BAFTA Television Craft Awards, the series won four of five nominations: Martin Phipps for Original Television Music, Anthony Dod Mantle for Photograph & Lighting (Fiction/Entertainment), Jacqueline Abrahams for Production Design, and Bosse Persson, Lee Crichlow, Iain Eyre and Paul Hamblin for Sound (Fiction/Entertainment). Ray Leek was also nominated for his opening titles work.[125][126]
In May 2009, PBS distributed promotional DVDs of One Step Behind to members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for nomination consideration at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards.[127] The episode was not nominated, but Branagh was nominated for his performance in the Outstanding Actor, Miniseries or Movie category and Philip Martin was nominated for Outstanding Directing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Dramatic Special.[128] Branagh was placed on longlist in the Best Actor category of the 2010 National Television Awards.[129] The series was nominated for The TV Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards.[130]
In November 2009, the Royal Television Society presented the series with two awards at the 2009 RTS Craft & Design Awards; Aidan Farrell at post-production house The Farm was presented with the Effects (Picture Enhancement) award, and Martin Phipps and Emily Barker with the Music (Original Title) award for the opening theme. Anthony Dod Mantle was also nominated in the Lighting, Photography & Camera (Photography)—Drama category, and Bosse Persson, Lee Crichlow, Iain Eyre and Paul Hamblin in the Sound (Drama) category.[131] The series was nominated in the Best Drama Series/Serial category at the Broadcast Awards 2010.[132] The International Press Academy nominated the series for the Satellite Award for Best Miniseries and Branagh for the Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.[133] The Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominated Branagh for the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film for his performance in One Step Behind.[134]
Impact on the Wallander franchise[edit]
In a Radio Times interview, Henning Mankell announced that he has a new Wallander book in the works. Several Swedish media outlets have speculated that the renewed Wallander interest in the UK and the warm reception of the BBC adaptations has sparked a new motivation in writing further Wallander novels; Mankell's last book starring the Ystad inspector was originally published in 1999.[135][136][137] The new and final Kurt Wallander book, The Troubled Man, was published in Swedish in August 2009.[138]
The increase in sales of the novels already published in the UK was also attributed to the television series.[139]
Impact on Ystad[edit]
The series has resulted in a new interest among British tourists to visit Sweden, and especially Ystad and the rest of the Skåne province according to Itta Johnson, Marketing Strategist with Ystad County. Johnson reports that in the past British people were reluctant to visit Sweden since they saw the country as cold and expensive, but now questions are mostly about the light and the nature seen in the BBC series. Statistics Sweden reports that Skåne is the only Swedish region that has seen an increase in hotel visits during the first quarter of 2009. The largest increase in non-Scandinavian tourists is seen among Britons, who now count for 12% which is almost as large as the percentage of visitors from Germany, at 13%.[140] In 2009, Ystad saw an increase of tourists from the UK with 18%, and local politicians credit the BBC Wallander series with attracting British tourists.[141]
Johnson estimates that 2–3% of the people who watched the first series of Wallander on the BBC decided to visit the region. In 2008 tourism brought into Ystad 51 million Swedish kronor (c. £4.4 million) and with the influx of British tourists this number could very likely be higher for 2009.[142]
"A lot of travel organisers from the UK call and want to include Ystad in what they can offer their clients" says Marie Holmström, tourism coordinator with Ystad tourism agency. "This year (2009) we have 30% more hotel bookings from Great Britain, compared to last year. Kenneth Branagh says many good things about this town and we have received many requests from British press".[143] Jolanta Olsson, tourism coordinator with Ystad tourism agency, says they get many requests from visiting Britons concerning shooting locations and where the film crew reside.[144]
Starting in October 2009, Ystad will start hosting a film festival with a focus on crime fiction. The festival is kick started with a marathon of series one and a speech by Yellow Bird producer Daniel Ahlqvist.[145]
Ystad was awarded the 2009 Stora Turismpriset (The Great Tourism Award). "The brand of Ystad as a film- and tourism town has been strengthened due consequent and longsighted film investments" said Pia Jönsson- Rajgård, President of Tourism in Skåne.[146]
Videos
Interviews
Press releases