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Wallander (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Wallander is a British television series adapted from the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell
's Kurt Wallander
novels and starring Kenneth Branagh
as the eponymous police inspector. The first three-episode series, produced by Yellow Bird
, Left Bank Pictures
and TKBC for BBC Scotland
, were broadcast on BBC One
from November to December 2008. It is the first time the Wallander novels have been adapted into an English-language production. Yellow Bird, formed by Mankell, began negotiations with British companies to produce the adaptations in 2006. In 2007, Branagh met with Mankell personally to discuss playing the role. Contracts were signed and work began on the films, adapted from 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. The two were keen to use the Red One digital camera, making Wallander the first British television series to do so.
Using scripts adapted by Richard Cottan and Richard McBrien, filming ran for 12 weeks from April to July 2008 in Wallander's hometown of Ystad
, Sweden
. The series had a budget of £7.5 million, drawn from the BBC and from pre-sales to Germany and America; Germany's ARD Degeto
and America's WGBH Boston
are credited as co-producers for their budget contribution. Critics have written positively of the series. The three films were broadcast on BBC One on 30 November, 7 December, and 14 December 2008 respectively.
The second series was filmed from July to October 2009 and was broadcast from 3 January 2010. The third series began filming in the summer of 2011 in Ystad
and Riga
, Latvia
. Filming will conclude in Autumn 2011, after Branagh finishes a stage engagement in Belfast
. The series has won a Broadcasting Press Guild Award
(Best Actor for Branagh) and six British Academy Television Awards
, including Best Drama Series
.
, is played by Kenneth Branagh
. 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's a level of empathy with the victims of crime that's almost impossible to contain, and one of the prices he pays for that sort of empathy is a personal life that's a kind of wasteland." 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. 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.
Wallander's team at the Ystad police station is made up of: Anne-Britt Hoglund (played by Sarah Smart
), Svedberg (played by Tom Beard), and Martinsson (played by Tom 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." The team is joined at murder scenes by Nyberg (played by Richard McCabe
), a forensics expert. The team is overseen by Lisa Holgersson (played by Sadie Shimmin), Ystad's chief of police. Away from the police station, Wallander has a tempestuous relationship with his daughter Linda (played by Jeany Spark
), and his father Povel (played by David 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. He is taken care of by his new wife Gertrude (played by Polly Hemingway).
In 2006, Yellow Bird managing director Morten Fisker opened discussions with British production companies about developing English-language adaptations of the Kurt Wallander novels, to which Yellow Bird holds the distribution rights. The BBC and Channel 4 were believed to be involved in discussions; the BBC had already announced plans to adapt Mankell's The Return of the Dancing Master
. Fisker wanted to bring a new detective to British screens to replace Inspector Morse, who had been killed off on-screen in 2000. Actors proposed to play Wallander were Trevor Eve
, Neil Pearson
, Jason Isaacs
, David Morrissey
, Clive Owen
and Michael Gambon
. Negotiations were still under way in 2007, when Kenneth Branagh met Henning Mankell at an Ingmar Bergman
film festival and asked to play Wallander. Branagh had started reading the Wallander books "relatively late" but enjoyed them, and read all nine translated novels in a month. Mankell agreed to let Branagh play the role, and Branagh visited Ystad in December to scout for locations and meet Film i Skånes chief executive Ralf Ivarsson.
A series of three 90-minute adaptations was commissioned by BBC Scotland
's Anne Mensah and BBC Controller of Fiction Jane Tranter
in January 2008. Like Morten Fisker, the BBC wanted a returning series that would have the same audience appeal as Inspector Morse
, Prime Suspect and Cracker
. Yellow Bird was contracted as a co-producer, working with Left Bank Pictures
, a production house formed in 2007 by former ITV Controller of Comedy, Drama and Film Andy Harries
. Harries described Wallander as "more than just a detective series" and that it would be visually "very picture postcard". The first series consists of adaptations of Sidetracked, One Step Behind
and Firewall. Philip Martin
was hired as lead director of the series, and met with Branagh, Harries and Left Bank producer Francis Hopkinson in January. The four discussed how the adaptations would appear on screen, agreeing that the characterisations, atmosphere and ideas would be difficult to portray on screen. Richard Cottan was hired to adapt Mankell's novels, and delivered his first scripts in February. Cottan changed the plots of some of the books in order to fit them into a 90-minute adaptation, though made sure the scripts retained Wallander's "journey". The following month, Martin began discussions with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle
about what visual style the films would have. They agreed to use the Red One digital camera to shoot on, which has a near-35 mm
resolution and is not as expensive as 35 mm; Dod Mantle said that the BBC "has politics" about the cheaper 16 mm
and Super 16
. Casting of British actors, which was done in London, was completed by April, and the whole crew moved over to Ystad to begin rehearsals. Martin wanted the actors playing police officers to know how to fire a gun, so arranged for them to spend time at a firing range using live ammunition.
and German ARD Degeto
, and a tax deduction for filming in Sweden.
Location filming was principally set in Ystad. Interior sets were constructed at Ystad Studios under the supervision of Anders Olin, who also designed the sets of the Swedish Wallander films. The main police station set is 500 square metres, twice the size of Olin's previous sets. For exterior shots of the police station, a combination of the Ystad railway station and swimming pool was used. Mock-ups of Ystads Allehanda, a local newspaper, were produced as working props. Producer Simon Moseley explained that the mock-ups use Swedish words that can be understood by English-speaking audiences. Moseley also explained that some pronunciations of Swedish words are Anglicised (such as the pronunciation of "Ystad" and "Wallander"), as "the authentic local accent is very strange to English ears and we didn't want to stray into Allo! Allo! territory". Like Branagh, Philip Martin did not watch any of the Swedish-language Wallander films so that he could bring a fresh interpretation to the films. Filming was scheduled for 66 days over 12 weeks in Sweden; each film would be shot back-to-back over 22 days. Martin directed the first and third films and Niall MacCormick
directed the second. Dod Mantle was keen to conceive a good style for what could become a long-running series.
Filming on Sidetracked commenced on 14 April on location at a townhouse in Södra Änggatan, Ystad. Parking of cars was forbidden in the surrounding residential areas during shooting, though the locals were used to this, having had the Swedish Wallander films filming there for years. The same week, filming was done at Häckeberga Castle near Genarp
. Another castle was going to be used, but the deal fell through. The manager of Häckeberga Castle, which had been turned into a hotel, allowed filming to take place there on the night of 17 April, though guests had to be moved to stables for the night. Scenes set in the rapeseed field were filmed at Charlottenlund Mansion. Location scouts had been impressed with the look of the winter rapeseed. The team from Danish Special Effects had difficulty setting the field on fire. Using the Red One digital camera meant that rushes could be viewed on set, saving time on the already tight schedule. Martin and Dod Mantle believed that the Red captured the Swedish light well, so there was no need to use big lighting rigs. The cheaper filming option meant that the budget could be used on other things.
One Step Behind was filmed in May. The opening scene, featuring a multiple murder and burial in the woods, was filmed on location at the Hagestads nature reserve. A large hole was needed for the shallow grave, so Yellow Bird approached the local authority for permission. The request was granted on the same day as it was lodged, with the stipulation that the hole be filled in after filming. Niall MacCormick arrived in Sweden to film Firewall in June, concluding in the third week of July. Danish Special Effects also worked on body squibs
, bullet hits and atmospheric effects. Their post-production work was completed in August. While the crew were in Sweden, editing was done at The Chimney Pot in Stockholm
. Post-production was completed by The Farm in London. Martin Phipps
composed the soundtrack to the series. A version of "Nostalgia" by Australian singer-songwriter Emily Barker
is the opening theme.
, The Fifth Woman
and The Man Who Smiled
was confirmed by the BBC in May 2009 to start in the summer in Ystad. The BBC broadcast the series in January 2010. Richard Cottan wrote Faceless Killers and The Fifth Woman, while Simon Donald wrote The Man Who Smiled. Hettie MacDonald
directed Faceless Killers, Andy Wilson
handled The Man Who Smiled while Aisling Walsh
directed The Fifth Woman. Photographer Igor Martinovic (director of photography on Man on Wire
, the Academy Award winning documentary) worked with Macdonald and Wilson while Lukas Strebel, who won an Emmy in 2009 for Little Dorrit
, was in charge of photography for “The Fifth Woman.
The second series started shooting on 22 June 2009. The film crew consisted of slightly more Britons, as the Swedish language films were still filming in the area until December 2009. Yellow Bird's Daniel Ahlqvist said, "It is a quite special that we are doing two different Wallander productions at the same time. So it has been a little bit tougher to recruit competent personnel here in Skåne. We came to the conclusion that if we cannot get people from Skåne, we might as well bring in folks from the UK rather than Stockholm." The landscape of Skåne will be a big part of the second series. Shooting will start in the outskirts of Ystad but a big scene in Ystad city square is planned. Scenes are also planned to be filmed at the summer residence that served as the home for Wallander's father. Faceless killers, was first in the shooting schedule, followed by The Fifth Woman and last The Man Who Smiled. As with Series 1, each episode is filmed over approximately 22–23 days, with just 3–5 days set aside for studio recording, and the rest for location shooting. On 23 June, the film team spent all day in Simrishamn
, a coastal town north east of Ystad. Scenes were shot at the local police station and in the town square. Production Manager Nina Sackmann explained that "the town was perfect for what we needed to convey with this film". On 21 July, the portions of road 1015 passing by the Karlsfält Farmland Estate
north of Ystad was closed from 11 p.m. until midnight to accommodate the film crew.
On 18 August, closing scenes of The Fifth Woman, where Kurt Wallander is dragged away at gunpoint, were shot on location at Ystad railway station. On the right side of the railway track, this dramatic scene was being filmed and on the left side, commuters were exiting the train. About 40 meters away, the Swedish language Wallander film Vålnaden (The Ghost) was being filmed at the same time. Earlier in the week, scenes were shot at an old automobile repair and maintenance shop from 1928 in Hammenhög village
. Part of the building had served as a flower shop when Mankell wrote The Fifth Woman and, since a murder victim is a flower shop owner, it was convenient to shoot in the now abandoned building.
Filming on The Man Who Smiled began at the beginning of September. Location production on the episode concluded on 2 October. The first couple of weeks featured location work outside of the swimming baths—which doubles as the exterior of the police station. For the last two weeks, production moved to locations around the countryside of Österlen
. On Monday evening September 14, the Ystad city square was closed off to film an important action scene from The Man Who Smiled where Kurt Wallander comes running across the square as a car explodes. The clear blue September sky caused problems with the lighting and they had to wait until the sun started to set.
Kenneth Branagh explained that the challenge for filming series one was to “create” the strange world of Ystad, in part as Henning Mankell sees it, in part as script writer Rick Cottan saw it, and then upon arrival to realise that the town looks different. "To get all these different visions to work together was a bit nervous last year. This year the pressure is to develop the style of this show and develop the characters, for example the other policemen at the station. Branagh claimed that there had been no problems shooting due to weather conditions except the last day of filming: "Henning Mankell often writes about the long Swedish summer rains, but during two years of filming we have not seen any of that. No wonder British tourists like to visit." He also stated that there is a possibility of a third series. "It all depends on how these new episodes are received, but I think I really would like to film more episodes. But we also need to feel that we have something more to offer, more to tell and that the scripts are good." Any filming on a third series would be postponed until 2011, to allow Branagh to work on Thor. Yellow Bird's Daniel Ahlqvist believes that The White Lionesss South African setting will make it difficult to film, and the post-Cold War plot of The Dogs of Riga is no longer relevant, but sees no reason why Before the Frost and some new story ideas, in the same vein as the original Yellow Bird films could not be developed for the BBC.
Local politicians supported and invested 8,000,000 Swedish kronor (roughly £ 750,000) in the second Wallander series through Film i Skåne, a regional resource and production centre.
Series 2 features some interesting choices of actors for minor roles. Fredrik Gunnarsson features in Faceless Killers as Valfrid Strom, Gunnarson appears in 17 episodes of Yellow Bird's
Swedish language TV series
as uniformed police officer Svartman. Rune Bergman had a minor role in the Swedish language adaptation of Faceless Killers and also featured in the TV film Luftslottet. Patrik Karlson featured in the Swedish language adaptation of The Man Who Smiled as well as the TV film Mastermind. Bergman and Karlson have the distinction of appearing in films starring the three different Kurt Wallander actors. Karin Bertling also appears in the English language Faceless Killers and has previously worked on the Swedish language TV film Before the Frost.
Screenwriter Peter Harness
has written the scripts for all three films that will make up Series 3. Harness
grew up in Yorkshire
and has been living in Malmö
, Sweden
since 2008. He is known for his work on the BBC's Case Histories, as well as the Michael Caine
movie Is Anybody There? Mankell has worked closely with Harness on the scripts. - He is too busy to talk to me all the time. But we have met to discuss the material, so he is involved in what happens, Harness told Ystads Allehanda.
Actress Rebekah Staton
(Pulling
, No Heroics
, Home Time
) will portray brand new character Kristina in all three episodes of the new season.
On August 4, 2011 it was made official that three new films were in production. The filming of The Dogs of Riga
started in Latvia
on August 1 at The Hotel Riga, and concluded on August 20. More scenes were shot in Ystad
the following week. This film is directed by Esther May Campbell, best known for her BAFTA award winning short film September and her work on the TV series Skins
, and features cinematography
by Lukas Strebel who worked on Wallander Series II. The production tried to use as many Latvian actors as possible but a problem arose as most Latvian actors had a very limited knowledge of English
. Latvian actor Arthur Skrastins was the only native actor that landed a speaking role in the film. He will portray Colonel Putnis. Romanian Actor Dragos Bucur
portrays Sergei Upitis, an investigative journalist.
The film was partially funded by The Riga Film Fund and co-stars Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė
, who have appeared in international productions such as the Hollywood films Hannibal Rising
and Mission: Impossible
plus several episodes of British TV-dramas' Bodies
, Prime Suspect and Silent Witness
.
On August 10, several scenes were shot outside the Latvian Parliament
and outside a building on Jēkaba ielā street that was decorated with Swedish flags, to stand in for the Swedish embassy in Riga. On August 13, the city closed down several streets to accommodate the filming. On August 16 scenes were filmed at Riga’s
central station. The national police car
s used in for this production had been equipped with stickers that said Rīgas pilsētas policijas (Riga City Police). These stickers covered up the usual coat of arms
that Latvian police cars are decorated with, these stickers were designed specifically for the film and are easily removed. Nothing on Latvian police cars specifies what city they serve in.
On August 22 the film team was back in Sweden
to film for one week. The shooting started at a foofball pitch in Kåseberga
, that has been converted into a filming area. Producer Hillary Benson explained to local press that once The Dogs of Riga
had wrapped up, the film team would be back in mid October to start filming the other two episodes. The first two series were filmed in the summer, this time around the aim will be to film in the autumn and winter.
The other two films in the series will be Before The Frost
, based on the novel of the same name, and An Event in Autumn, which is based on the short story Händelse om hösten (The Grave), a short story from 2004 published only in the Netherlands
. Before The Frost
will be directed by Charles Martin
who has worked on Skins
, The Sarah Jane Adventures
and Being Human
. He will work with cinematographer Thomas Burton.
They started shooting in Ystad
on Wednesday 12,October 2011. The first days of shooting will be stunts and scenes with an animal trainer as Kenneth Branagh
does not arrive until Monday 17. Scenes were also shot at The chemistry hall at the Macklean School in Skurup Municipality
. With the local fire squad
on stand by, a stunt man poured petrol over himself and then sat himself on fire. This three minutes long film sequence started at Friday the 14 at 6 pm and wrapped up at 3.30 am on Saturday morning. The film crew will be back at the end of October
to shoot a scene using headmaster Christin Stigborgs office. From Tuesday, October 24 and till the end of the week, three streets in central Ystad
(Lilla Norregatan, Stora Norregatan and Sladdergatan) had to be closed down for a short ammount of time to shoot several scenes.
Parts of this film were shot in the Snogeholm nature conservation area, Sjöbo Municipality
. The filming took place for several days along the roads and a parking space. This was mainly shots of the environment and the nature of the conversation area and the Snogeholm lake, according to production manager Martin Ersgård.
An Event in Autumn will be the last film to shoot. Filming will start Monday, November 14 and will be directed by Toby Haynes
of Doctor Who
, Sherlock and Being Human
fame. According to Yellow Bird
producer Daniel Ahlqvist, An Event In Autumn is about how "Kurt tries to take charge of his own life by getting a new house but gets interrupted and is more or less forced back to his job".
On October 21 and 23 the crew was filming at an old small farm in the small village
of Svarte
. It is located around the corner from the house were Kurt Wallander's father lived in the previous films. Local farmer Wilhelm von Platen spent the two days teaching one of the actors how to drive a tractor
. The small farm house is Wallander's new home but the remains of a dead woman are found on the property. Producer Hillary Benson explained to the local newspaper that this film will wrap on December
14 and will air in the UK
in March 2012. Due to time constraints, all scenes were filmed with two cameras, unusual for a BBC
production, to provide more material for post production and cutting.
With the previous two series, the Skåne Regional Council
invested 7 and 8 million Swedish kronor through its subsidiary Film i Skåne. With the third series, the Skåne Regional Council
only wanted to invest 2 million kronor. They later signed on to support the production by other means such as letting BBC
& Yellow Bird
use Ystad Studios for free, worth about half a million Swedish kronor.
City of Ystad-Österlens Film Bond also invested 2 million Swedish kronor.
on 10 November 2008, and was followed by a question-and-answer session with Philip Martin and Kenneth Branagh. A gala premiere of Sidetracked was held in Ystad on 23 November, a week before it was broadcast in Britain. Sidetrackeds 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
. BBC Four
broadcast programmes and films to complement the series; the schedule included a documentary by John Harvey
entitled 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
.
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 M6, Canada, Slovenia, Australia, Lumiere Benelux and Svensk Film for its pan Scandinavian feed. BBC Worldwide
, the BBC's commercial arm, sold the series to further buyers at the Mipcom
television festival in October 2008. 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. 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. In Germany, ARD broadcast the first series episodes on 29 and 30 May, and 1 June 2009. TV4 broadcast the first series in Sweden from 11 October 2009.
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". 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". 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".
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". 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". 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. 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", though Cochrane called it a "familiar element". 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." The broadcast had an average 6.2 million viewers and 23.9% audience share. 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. Final ratings, incorporating those who watched via DVR
, was 6.54 million, making it the eighth-most-watched programme on BBC One that week. An editorial in The Independent complained that the episode's closing credits ran too fast; a hundred names were displayed in 14 seconds. Branagh called the speed of the credits "insulting". The actors' union Equity also complained to BBC director general Mark Thompson
.
Firewall was seen by 5.6 million (23% share), 600,000 viewers and one share point down on the previous week. Final ratings boosted it to 5.90 million and the tenth-most-watched broadcast on BBC One that week. 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." 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". 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." One Step Behind received overnight ratings of 5.6 million (22.4%). Final ratings were recorded as 5.66 million, making it the week's twelfth-most-watched programme on BBC One. 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". The Daily Record named it "Best of this week's TV" 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.
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 this Wallander 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 of films. He emphasises that not only is Branagh’s performance of higher quality than the current Swedish Wallander actor Krister Henriksson
, but the BBC series really understands 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.
(2009). It is his first major television award win in the UK. The series was nominated for Best Drama Series but lost to The Devil's Whore
. The series, represented by Sidetracked, won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series
. Richard Cottan, Kenneth Branagh, Philip Martin and Francis Hopkinson are named as the nomination recipients. 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.
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
. 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. Kenneth Branagh has been placed on longlist in the Best Actor category of the 2010 National Television Awards
. The series was nominated for The TV Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards.
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. The series has been nominated in the Best Drama Series/Serial category at the Broadcast Awards 2010. The International Press Academy
has nominated the series for the Satellite Award for Best Miniseries
and Branagh for the Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association
has nominated Branagh for the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film for his performance in One Step Behind.
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. The new and final Kurt Wallander book, The Troubled Man
, was published in Swedish in August 2009.
The increase in sales of the novels already published in the UK was also attributed to the television series.
Due to the success of the BBC series, Yellow Bird
is now perusing the possibility of developing a French language
series.
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%. 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.
Itta 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.
“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”. 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.
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.
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.
The second series was released on DVD 8 Feb 2010. Tie-in editions of the novels adapted for Series 2 will be published in February 2010.
and Branagh
have discussed future projects based on non-Wallander
books. Anthony Hopkins
told Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet
that he will star in an adaptation of Mankell's book Italian Shoes
to be directed and produced by Branagh. Filming will most likely start in Sweden, after the third season of Wallander has wrapped up.
Videos
Interviews
Press releases
Henning Mankell
Henning Mankell is a Swedish crime writer, children's author, leftist activist and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most famous creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander.-Life and career:...
's Kurt Wallander
Kurt Wallander
Kurt Wallander is a fictional character created by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell. The protagonist of several mystery novels, set in and around the town of Ystad, 60 km south-east of the city of Malmö, in the southern province of Skåne...
novels and starring Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
as the eponymous police inspector. The first three-episode series, produced by Yellow Bird
Yellow Bird (company)
Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company founded by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell and film-producers Ole Søndberg and Lars Björkman. The company was founded to produce films based on Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. Yellow Bird was sold to Danish media house Zodiak...
, Left Bank Pictures
Left Bank Pictures
Left Bank Pictures is an English film and television production company. It was formed in 2007 by Andy Harries, formerly controller of drama, comedy and film at Granada Productions, and Francis Hopkinson and Marigo Kehoe...
and TKBC for BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...
, were broadcast on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
from November to December 2008. It is the first time the Wallander novels have been adapted into an English-language production. Yellow Bird, formed by Mankell, began negotiations with British companies to produce the adaptations in 2006. In 2007, Branagh met with Mankell personally to discuss playing the role. Contracts were signed and work began on the films, adapted from Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind
One Step Behind (novel)
One Step Behind is a crime novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, the seventh in his acclaimed Inspector Wallander series.-Synopsis:...
, in January 2008. Emmy-award-winning director Philip Martin
Philip Martin (director)
Philip Martin is a television director and screenwriter.Martin directed the television drama Hawking , which was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Single Drama; the final installment of the ITV drama Prime Suspect , which was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Drama Serial...
was hired as lead director. Martin worked with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle
Anthony Dod Mantle
Anthony Dod Mantle BSC is a British cinematographer notable for his work in digital cinematography.-Career:Dod Mantle directed photography on three Dogme 95 films and the first two episodes of Wallander. He used the Red One digital camera on Wallander, the first British television production to do...
to establish a visual style for the series. The two were keen to use the Red One digital camera, making Wallander the first British television series to do so.
Using scripts adapted by Richard Cottan and Richard McBrien, filming ran for 12 weeks from April to July 2008 in Wallander's hometown of Ystad
Ystad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. The series had a budget of £7.5 million, drawn from the BBC and from pre-sales to Germany and America; Germany's ARD Degeto
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
and America's WGBH Boston
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
are credited as co-producers for their budget contribution. Critics have written positively of the series. The three films were broadcast on BBC One on 30 November, 7 December, and 14 December 2008 respectively.
The second series was filmed from July to October 2009 and was broadcast from 3 January 2010. The third series began filming in the summer of 2011 in Ystad
Ystad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
and Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
. Filming will conclude in Autumn 2011, after Branagh finishes a stage engagement in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
. The series has won a Broadcasting Press Guild Award
Broadcasting Press Guild
The Broadcasting Press Guild is a British association of journalists who specialise in writing and broadcasting about television, radio and the media generally....
(Best Actor for Branagh) and six British Academy Television Awards
British Academy Television Awards
The British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . They have been awarded annually since 1954, and are analogous to the Emmy Awards in the United States.-Background:...
, including Best Drama Series
British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series
The British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series is one of the major categories of the British Academy Television Awards , the primary awards ceremony of the British television industry...
.
First series
- Sidetracked (aired 30 November 2008).
- Firewall (aired 7 December 2008).
- One Step Behind (aired 14 December 2008).
Second series
- Faceless Killers (aired 3 January 2010).
- The Man Who Smiled (aired 10 January 2010).
- The Fifth Woman (aired 17 January 2010).
Third series
- An Event in Autumn (TBA).
- The Dogs of Riga (TBA).
- Before the Frost (TBA).
Characters
The protagonist, Kurt WallanderKurt Wallander
Kurt Wallander is a fictional character created by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell. The protagonist of several mystery novels, set in and around the town of Ystad, 60 km south-east of the city of Malmö, in the southern province of Skåne...
, is played by Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
. 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's a level of empathy with the victims of crime that's almost impossible to contain, and one of the prices he pays for that sort of empathy is a personal life that's a kind of wasteland." 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
Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse is a fictional character in the eponymous series of detective novels by British author Colin Dexter, as well as the 33-episode 1987–2000 television adaptation of the same name, in which the character was portrayed by John Thaw. Morse is a senior CID officer with the Thames Valley...
, whose love of opera is already familiar to British viewers. 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.
Wallander's team at the Ystad police station is made up of: Anne-Britt Hoglund (played by Sarah Smart
Sarah Smart
Sarah Smart is an English actress.Smart was born in Birmingham, West Midlands, England. Her career started as a child, notably in the television series Woof!. She is best known for a series of well-regarded television roles including Virginia Braithwaite, daughter of a lottery winning family in...
), Svedberg (played by Tom Beard), and Martinsson (played by Tom Hiddleston
Tom Hiddleston
Thomas William "Tom" Hiddleston is an English actor. He is perhaps best known for playing Loki in the 2011 Marvel Studios film Thor.-Early life and education:...
). 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." The team is joined at murder scenes by Nyberg (played by Richard McCabe
Richard McCabe
Richard McCabe is a Scottish actor.-Biography:Richard McCabe was born in Glasgow to a Scottish father and French mother . He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , where he won several awards. Following the early death of his father and his mother's re-marriage, he grew up in Sussex where...
), a forensics expert. The team is overseen by Lisa Holgersson (played by Sadie Shimmin), Ystad's chief of police. Away from the police station, Wallander has a tempestuous relationship with his daughter Linda (played by Jeany Spark
Jeany Spark
Jeany Spark is a British actress, known for portraying Linda Wallander in the British television series Wallander...
), and his father Povel (played by David Warner
David Warner (actor)
David Warner is an English actor who is known for playing both romantic leads and sinister or villainous characters, both in film and animation...
), 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. He is taken care of by his new wife Gertrude (played by Polly Hemingway).
Production
The Return of the Dancing Master
The Return of the Dancing Master is a 2000 novel by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell. It was translated into English in 2003 by Laurie Thompson, and won the 2005 Gumshoe Award for Best European Crime Novel, presented by Mystery Ink....
. Fisker wanted to bring a new detective to British screens to replace Inspector Morse, who had been killed off on-screen in 2000. Actors proposed to play Wallander were Trevor Eve
Trevor Eve
Trevor John Eve is a British film and television actor. In 1979 he gained fame as the eponymous lead in the detective series Shoestring and is also known for his role as Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd in BBC television drama Waking the Dead.-Early life:Eve was born in Sutton Coldfield,...
, Neil Pearson
Neil Pearson
Neil Joshua Pearson is a British actor best known for his work on television.-Biography:Pearson grew up in Battersea, London, the son of a panel beater, who left home when he was five, and a legal secretary, and was educated at Woolverstone Hall School, Suffolk, a boarding school, where he first...
, Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs is an English actor born in Liverpool, who is best known for his performance as the villain Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, the brutal Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot and as lifelong criminal Michael Caffee in the internationally broadcast American television series...
, David Morrissey
David Morrissey
David Mark Morrissey is an English actor and director. Morrissey grew up in the Kensington and Knotty Ash areas of Liverpool, and learned to act at the city's Everyman Youth Theatre. At the age of 18, he was cast in the television series One Summer , which won him recognition throughout the country...
, Clive Owen
Clive Owen
Clive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
and Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon
Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...
. Negotiations were still under way in 2007, when Kenneth Branagh met Henning Mankell at an Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
film festival and asked to play Wallander. Branagh had started reading the Wallander books "relatively late" but enjoyed them, and read all nine translated novels in a month. Mankell agreed to let Branagh play the role, and Branagh visited Ystad in December to scout for locations and meet Film i Skånes chief executive Ralf Ivarsson.
A series of three 90-minute adaptations was commissioned by BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...
's Anne Mensah and BBC Controller of Fiction Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter is an English television executive who has been the executive vice-president of programming and production at BBC Worldwide's Los Angeles base since January 2009...
in January 2008. Like Morten Fisker, the BBC wanted a returning series that would have the same audience appeal as Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse (TV series)
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis. Dexter makes a cameo appearance in all but three of the episodes....
, Prime Suspect and Cracker
Cracker (UK TV series)
Cracker is a British crime drama series produced by Granada Television for ITV and created and principally written by Jimmy McGovern. The series is centered on a criminal psychologist , Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, played by Robbie Coltrane. Set in Manchester, it consists of three series which were...
. Yellow Bird was contracted as a co-producer, working with Left Bank Pictures
Left Bank Pictures
Left Bank Pictures is an English film and television production company. It was formed in 2007 by Andy Harries, formerly controller of drama, comedy and film at Granada Productions, and Francis Hopkinson and Marigo Kehoe...
, a production house formed in 2007 by former ITV Controller of Comedy, Drama and Film Andy Harries
Andy Harries
Andrew D. M. Harries is a British television and film producer. After graduating from Hull University in the 1970s, Harries began his television career on the Granada Television current affairs series World in Action, before moving on to freelance work...
. Harries described Wallander as "more than just a detective series" and that it would be visually "very picture postcard". The first series consists of adaptations of Sidetracked, One Step Behind
One Step Behind (novel)
One Step Behind is a crime novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, the seventh in his acclaimed Inspector Wallander series.-Synopsis:...
and Firewall. Philip Martin
Philip Martin (director)
Philip Martin is a television director and screenwriter.Martin directed the television drama Hawking , which was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Single Drama; the final installment of the ITV drama Prime Suspect , which was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Drama Serial...
was hired as lead director of the series, and met with Branagh, Harries and Left Bank producer Francis Hopkinson in January. The four discussed how the adaptations would appear on screen, agreeing that the characterisations, atmosphere and ideas would be difficult to portray on screen. Richard Cottan was hired to adapt Mankell's novels, and delivered his first scripts in February. Cottan changed the plots of some of the books in order to fit them into a 90-minute adaptation, though made sure the scripts retained Wallander's "journey". The following month, Martin began discussions with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle
Anthony Dod Mantle
Anthony Dod Mantle BSC is a British cinematographer notable for his work in digital cinematography.-Career:Dod Mantle directed photography on three Dogme 95 films and the first two episodes of Wallander. He used the Red One digital camera on Wallander, the first British television production to do...
about what visual style the films would have. They agreed to use the Red One digital camera to shoot on, which has a near-35 mm
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
resolution and is not as expensive as 35 mm; Dod Mantle said that the BBC "has politics" about the cheaper 16 mm
16 mm film
16 mm film refers to a popular, economical gauge of film used for motion pictures and non-theatrical film making. 16 mm refers to the width of the film...
and Super 16
16 mm film
16 mm film refers to a popular, economical gauge of film used for motion pictures and non-theatrical film making. 16 mm refers to the width of the film...
. Casting of British actors, which was done in London, was completed by April, and the whole crew moved over to Ystad to begin rehearsals. Martin wanted the actors playing police officers to know how to fire a gun, so arranged for them to spend time at a firing range using live ammunition.
Series 1
A £6 million budget was originally assigned to the first series, which increased to £7.5 million. Half of that came from the BBC, and the rest from pre-sale co-production funding from American WGBH BostonWGBH-TV
WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
and German ARD Degeto
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
, and a tax deduction for filming in Sweden.
Location filming was principally set in Ystad. Interior sets were constructed at Ystad Studios under the supervision of Anders Olin, who also designed the sets of the Swedish Wallander films. The main police station set is 500 square metres, twice the size of Olin's previous sets. For exterior shots of the police station, a combination of the Ystad railway station and swimming pool was used. Mock-ups of Ystads Allehanda, a local newspaper, were produced as working props. Producer Simon Moseley explained that the mock-ups use Swedish words that can be understood by English-speaking audiences. Moseley also explained that some pronunciations of Swedish words are Anglicised (such as the pronunciation of "Ystad" and "Wallander"), as "the authentic local accent is very strange to English ears and we didn't want to stray into Allo! Allo! territory". Like Branagh, Philip Martin did not watch any of the Swedish-language Wallander films so that he could bring a fresh interpretation to the films. Filming was scheduled for 66 days over 12 weeks in Sweden; each film would be shot back-to-back over 22 days. Martin directed the first and third films and Niall MacCormick
Niall MacCormick
Niall MacCormick is a British film and television director.-External links:...
directed the second. Dod Mantle was keen to conceive a good style for what could become a long-running series.
Filming on Sidetracked commenced on 14 April on location at a townhouse in Södra Änggatan, Ystad. Parking of cars was forbidden in the surrounding residential areas during shooting, though the locals were used to this, having had the Swedish Wallander films filming there for years. The same week, filming was done at Häckeberga Castle near Genarp
Genarp
Genarp is a locality situated in Lund Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 2,647 inhabitants in 2005. It is the southernmost urban area in Lund Municipality, located in Bara Hundred.Most of Genarp consists of residential areas with single-family homes...
. Another castle was going to be used, but the deal fell through. The manager of Häckeberga Castle, which had been turned into a hotel, allowed filming to take place there on the night of 17 April, though guests had to be moved to stables for the night. Scenes set in the rapeseed field were filmed at Charlottenlund Mansion. Location scouts had been impressed with the look of the winter rapeseed. The team from Danish Special Effects had difficulty setting the field on fire. Using the Red One digital camera meant that rushes could be viewed on set, saving time on the already tight schedule. Martin and Dod Mantle believed that the Red captured the Swedish light well, so there was no need to use big lighting rigs. The cheaper filming option meant that the budget could be used on other things.
One Step Behind was filmed in May. The opening scene, featuring a multiple murder and burial in the woods, was filmed on location at the Hagestads nature reserve. A large hole was needed for the shallow grave, so Yellow Bird approached the local authority for permission. The request was granted on the same day as it was lodged, with the stipulation that the hole be filled in after filming. Niall MacCormick arrived in Sweden to film Firewall in June, concluding in the third week of July. Danish Special Effects also worked on body squibs
Squib (explosive)
A squib is a miniature explosive device used in a wide range of industries, from special effects to military applications. It resembles a tiny stick of dynamite, both in appearance and construction, although with considerably less explosive power...
, bullet hits and atmospheric effects. Their post-production work was completed in August. While the crew were in Sweden, editing was done at The Chimney Pot in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. Post-production was completed by The Farm in London. Martin Phipps
Martin Phipps
Martin Phipps is an award-winning British composer, who has garnered critical acclaim for his work on numerous film and television projects.- Career :...
composed the soundtrack to the series. A version of "Nostalgia" by Australian singer-songwriter Emily Barker
Emily Barker
Emily Barker is a guitarist and singer-songwriter born in Bridgetown, Western Australia. With chamber-folk trio The Red Clay Halo, she has recorded three albums: Photos.Fires.Fables. , Despite The Snow and Almanac...
is the opening theme.
Series 2
The production of three new films based on Faceless KillersFaceless Killers
Faceless Killers is a crime novel by Swedish writer Henning Mankell, and the first in his acclaimed Wallander series. The English translation by Steven T...
, The Fifth Woman
The Fifth Woman
The Fifth Woman is a crime novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, the sixth in his acclaimed Inspector Wallander series.-Synopsis:...
and The Man Who Smiled
The Man Who Smiled
The Man Who Smiled is a novel by Swedish crime-writer Henning Mankell, and is the fourth in the Inspector Wallander series, although the English translations have not been published in chronological order.-Synopsis:...
was confirmed by the BBC in May 2009 to start in the summer in Ystad. The BBC broadcast the series in January 2010. Richard Cottan wrote Faceless Killers and The Fifth Woman, while Simon Donald wrote The Man Who Smiled. Hettie MacDonald
Hettie MacDonald
Hettie MacDonald is a British director who won a Grand Prix award, an International Jury Award - Honorable Mention and a People's Choice Award for her work on the film Beautiful Thing. She has also directed for television and the stage....
directed Faceless Killers, Andy Wilson
Andy Wilson (director)
Andy Wilson is a British film, TV and theatre director, born in 1958.-Early career:Wilson began his career as a performer with Circus Lumiere...
handled The Man Who Smiled while Aisling Walsh
Aisling Walsh
Aisling Walsh is an Irish writer and director.-Early life:She was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1958 to Raphael Walsh, a furniture designer and manufacturer from Navan, County Meath...
directed The Fifth Woman. Photographer Igor Martinovic (director of photography on Man on Wire
Man on Wire
Man on Wire is a 2008 British documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Philippe Petit's book, To Reach the Clouds, recently released in paperback with the new title...
, the Academy Award winning documentary) worked with Macdonald and Wilson while Lukas Strebel, who won an Emmy in 2009 for Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit (TV serial)
Little Dorrit is a 2008 British television serial directed by Adam Smith, Dearbhla Walsh, and Diarmuid Lawrence. The teleplay by Andrew Davies is based on the serial novel of the same title by Charles Dickens, originally published between 1855 and 1857....
, was in charge of photography for “The Fifth Woman.
The second series started shooting on 22 June 2009. The film crew consisted of slightly more Britons, as the Swedish language films were still filming in the area until December 2009. Yellow Bird's Daniel Ahlqvist said, "It is a quite special that we are doing two different Wallander productions at the same time. So it has been a little bit tougher to recruit competent personnel here in Skåne. We came to the conclusion that if we cannot get people from Skåne, we might as well bring in folks from the UK rather than Stockholm." The landscape of Skåne will be a big part of the second series. Shooting will start in the outskirts of Ystad but a big scene in Ystad city square is planned. Scenes are also planned to be filmed at the summer residence that served as the home for Wallander's father. Faceless killers, was first in the shooting schedule, followed by The Fifth Woman and last The Man Who Smiled. As with Series 1, each episode is filmed over approximately 22–23 days, with just 3–5 days set aside for studio recording, and the rest for location shooting. On 23 June, the film team spent all day in Simrishamn
Simrishamn
Simrishamn is a locality and the seat of Simrishamn Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 6,546 inhabitants in 2005. Simrishamn is, despite its small population, for historical reasons normally still referred to as a city....
, a coastal town north east of Ystad. Scenes were shot at the local police station and in the town square. Production Manager Nina Sackmann explained that "the town was perfect for what we needed to convey with this film". On 21 July, the portions of road 1015 passing by the Karlsfält Farmland Estate
Stora Herrestad
Stora Herrestad is a locality situated in Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 258 inhabitants in 2005....
north of Ystad was closed from 11 p.m. until midnight to accommodate the film crew.
On 18 August, closing scenes of The Fifth Woman, where Kurt Wallander is dragged away at gunpoint, were shot on location at Ystad railway station. On the right side of the railway track, this dramatic scene was being filmed and on the left side, commuters were exiting the train. About 40 meters away, the Swedish language Wallander film Vålnaden (The Ghost) was being filmed at the same time. Earlier in the week, scenes were shot at an old automobile repair and maintenance shop from 1928 in Hammenhög village
Hammenhög
Hammenhög is a locality situated in Simrishamn Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 908 inhabitants in 2005.The village is named after a bronze-age grave, the first part of the name, Hammen-, refers to a person named Haming or Hamund, the second part, -hög, from the Old Norse word Haugr, means...
. Part of the building had served as a flower shop when Mankell wrote The Fifth Woman and, since a murder victim is a flower shop owner, it was convenient to shoot in the now abandoned building.
Filming on The Man Who Smiled began at the beginning of September. Location production on the episode concluded on 2 October. The first couple of weeks featured location work outside of the swimming baths—which doubles as the exterior of the police station. For the last two weeks, production moved to locations around the countryside of Österlen
Österlen
Österlen is the southeastern part of the Swedish province of Scania. The name derives from its location 'east of the route' ; 'Öster om len' . The principal town of Österlen is Simrishamn...
. On Monday evening September 14, the Ystad city square was closed off to film an important action scene from The Man Who Smiled where Kurt Wallander comes running across the square as a car explodes. The clear blue September sky caused problems with the lighting and they had to wait until the sun started to set.
Kenneth Branagh explained that the challenge for filming series one was to “create” the strange world of Ystad, in part as Henning Mankell sees it, in part as script writer Rick Cottan saw it, and then upon arrival to realise that the town looks different. "To get all these different visions to work together was a bit nervous last year. This year the pressure is to develop the style of this show and develop the characters, for example the other policemen at the station. Branagh claimed that there had been no problems shooting due to weather conditions except the last day of filming: "Henning Mankell often writes about the long Swedish summer rains, but during two years of filming we have not seen any of that. No wonder British tourists like to visit." He also stated that there is a possibility of a third series. "It all depends on how these new episodes are received, but I think I really would like to film more episodes. But we also need to feel that we have something more to offer, more to tell and that the scripts are good." Any filming on a third series would be postponed until 2011, to allow Branagh to work on Thor. Yellow Bird's Daniel Ahlqvist believes that The White Lionesss South African setting will make it difficult to film, and the post-Cold War plot of The Dogs of Riga is no longer relevant, but sees no reason why Before the Frost and some new story ideas, in the same vein as the original Yellow Bird films could not be developed for the BBC.
Local politicians supported and invested 8,000,000 Swedish kronor (roughly £ 750,000) in the second Wallander series through Film i Skåne, a regional resource and production centre.
Series 2 features some interesting choices of actors for minor roles. Fredrik Gunnarsson features in Faceless Killers as Valfrid Strom, Gunnarson appears in 17 episodes of Yellow Bird's
Yellow Bird (company)
Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company founded by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell and film-producers Ole Søndberg and Lars Björkman. The company was founded to produce films based on Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. Yellow Bird was sold to Danish media house Zodiak...
Swedish language TV series
Wallander (Swedish TV series)
Wallander is a Swedish television series adapted from Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels and starring Krister Henriksson in the title role. The 1st series of 13 films were produced in 2005 and 2006, with one taken directly from a novel and the remainder with new storylines suggested by Mankell...
as uniformed police officer Svartman. Rune Bergman had a minor role in the Swedish language adaptation of Faceless Killers and also featured in the TV film Luftslottet. Patrik Karlson featured in the Swedish language adaptation of The Man Who Smiled as well as the TV film Mastermind. Bergman and Karlson have the distinction of appearing in films starring the three different Kurt Wallander actors. Karin Bertling also appears in the English language Faceless Killers and has previously worked on the Swedish language TV film Before the Frost.
Series 3
The third series, currently in production, will focus on Wallander's relationship with his adult daughter after the death of his father.Screenwriter Peter Harness
Peter Harness
Peter Harness is an English playwright, screenwriter and actor. He grew up in Hornsea, East Yorkshire and attended Oriel College, Oxford where he studied English and graduated with a first. He is a former president of the Oxford Revue. He was one of Screen International's Stars of Tomorrow, 2007...
has written the scripts for all three films that will make up Series 3. Harness
Peter Harness
Peter Harness is an English playwright, screenwriter and actor. He grew up in Hornsea, East Yorkshire and attended Oriel College, Oxford where he studied English and graduated with a first. He is a former president of the Oxford Revue. He was one of Screen International's Stars of Tomorrow, 2007...
grew up in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
and has been living in Malmö
Malmö
Malmö , in the southernmost province of Scania, is the third most populous city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg.Malmö is the seat of Malmö Municipality and the capital of Skåne County...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
since 2008. He is known for his work on the BBC's Case Histories, as well as the Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
movie Is Anybody There? Mankell has worked closely with Harness on the scripts. - He is too busy to talk to me all the time. But we have met to discuss the material, so he is involved in what happens, Harness told Ystads Allehanda.
Actress Rebekah Staton
Rebekah Staton
Rebekah Staton is a British actress who was raised in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. She attended Wolgarston High School and trained at RADA....
(Pulling
Pulling
Pulling is a BBC comedy series, produced by Silver River Productions and broadcast on BBC Three, about three single female friends who live in Penge, south-east London...
, No Heroics
No Heroics
No Heroics is a British superhero-comedy television series, which began on 18 September 2008. The show is ITV2's first original sitcom. It was nominated for Best New British TV Comedy of 2008 at the British Comedy Awards.-Setting:...
, Home Time
Home Time
Home Time is a British television comedy-drama written by and starring Emma Fryer with Neil Edmond co-writing. The first series ran between 14 September and 22 October 2009 on BBC Two.- Series 1 :...
) will portray brand new character Kristina in all three episodes of the new season.
On August 4, 2011 it was made official that three new films were in production. The filming of The Dogs of Riga
The Dogs of Riga
The Dogs of Riga is a Swedish detective mystery by Henning Mankell, set in Riga, the capital of Latvia. It is the second book of the Kurt Wallander series, and was translated into English by Laurie Thompson.- Plot introduction:...
started in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
on August 1 at The Hotel Riga, and concluded on August 20. More scenes were shot in Ystad
Ystad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
the following week. This film is directed by Esther May Campbell, best known for her BAFTA award winning short film September and her work on the TV series Skins
Skins (TV series)
Skins is a BAFTA award-winning British teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of college. The controversial plot line explores issues such as dysfunctional families, mental illness , adolescent sexuality, substance abuse and death...
, and features cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
by Lukas Strebel who worked on Wallander Series II. The production tried to use as many Latvian actors as possible but a problem arose as most Latvian actors had a very limited knowledge of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Latvian actor Arthur Skrastins was the only native actor that landed a speaking role in the film. He will portray Colonel Putnis. Romanian Actor Dragos Bucur
Dragos Bucur
Dragoş Bucur is a Romanian actor.Dragoş Bucur received the Shooting Stars Award, the annual acting award for up-and-coming actors by European Film Promotion, at the Berlin International Film Festival 2010.-Selected filmography:...
portrays Sergei Upitis, an investigative journalist.
The film was partially funded by The Riga Film Fund and co-stars Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė
Ingeborga Dapkunaite
Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė is a Lithuanian actress, who stars mostly in Russian movies.-Youth:Ingeborga Dapkunaite was born in Vilnius, Lithuanian SSR. Her father was a diplomat and her mother a meteorologist. For many years her parents worked in Moscow, and she only saw them on holidays...
, who have appeared in international productions such as the Hollywood films Hannibal Rising
Hannibal Rising
Hannibal Rising is a novel written by Thomas Harris, published in 2006. It is a prequel to his three previous books featuring his character, the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The novel was released with an initial printing of at least 1.5 million copies and met with a mixed...
and Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible (film)
Mission: Impossible is a 1996 action thriller directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. Following on from the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole within the CIA who has framed him for the murders of his entire...
plus several episodes of British TV-dramas' Bodies
Bodies (TV series)
Bodies is a BAFTA-nominated British television medical drama produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. Created by Jed Mercurio, the series began in 2004 and is based on his book Bodies. The first series debuted on BBC Three as the channel at this time was trying to break out into hour-long...
, Prime Suspect and Silent Witness
Silent Witness
Silent Witness is a BBC crime thriller series focusing on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes. First broadcast in February 1996, the series is still airing to the present day, with a fifteenth series expected to air in January 2012. The series was...
.
On August 10, several scenes were shot outside the Latvian Parliament
Saeima
Saeima is the parliament of the Republic of Latvia. It is a unicameral parliament consisting of 100 members who are elected by proportional representation, with seats allocated to political parties which gain at least 5% of the popular vote. Elections are scheduled to be held once every four years,...
and outside a building on Jēkaba ielā street that was decorated with Swedish flags, to stand in for the Swedish embassy in Riga. On August 13, the city closed down several streets to accommodate the filming. On August 16 scenes were filmed at Riga’s
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
central station. The national police car
Police car
A police car is a ground vehicle used by police, to assist with their duties in patrolling and responding to incidents. Typical uses of a police car include transportation for officers to reach the scene of an incident quickly, to transport criminal suspects, or to patrol an area, while providing a...
s used in for this production had been equipped with stickers that said Rīgas pilsētas policijas (Riga City Police). These stickers covered up the usual coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...
that Latvian police cars are decorated with, these stickers were designed specifically for the film and are easily removed. Nothing on Latvian police cars specifies what city they serve in.
On August 22 the film team was back in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
to film for one week. The shooting started at a foofball pitch in Kåseberga
Löderup
Löderup is a locality situated in Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 558 inhabitants in 2005....
, that has been converted into a filming area. Producer Hillary Benson explained to local press that once The Dogs of Riga
The Dogs of Riga
The Dogs of Riga is a Swedish detective mystery by Henning Mankell, set in Riga, the capital of Latvia. It is the second book of the Kurt Wallander series, and was translated into English by Laurie Thompson.- Plot introduction:...
had wrapped up, the film team would be back in mid October to start filming the other two episodes. The first two series were filmed in the summer, this time around the aim will be to film in the autumn and winter.
The other two films in the series will be Before The Frost
Before the Frost
Before the Frost is a novel by Swedish crime-writer Henning Mankell.The main protagonist is Linda Wallander, daughter of Inspector Wallander...
, based on the novel of the same name, and An Event in Autumn, which is based on the short story Händelse om hösten (The Grave), a short story from 2004 published only in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. Before The Frost
Before the Frost
Before the Frost is a novel by Swedish crime-writer Henning Mankell.The main protagonist is Linda Wallander, daughter of Inspector Wallander...
will be directed by Charles Martin
Charles Martin (director)
Charles Martin is a British television director.-Director:The original Big Brother Eye Logo *The Giblet Boys *My Life as a Popat**"Juvenile Delinquent" **"Ghost" **"Girlfiend" **"Tit for Tat"...
who has worked on Skins
Skins (TV series)
Skins is a BAFTA award-winning British teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of college. The controversial plot line explores issues such as dysfunctional families, mental illness , adolescent sexuality, substance abuse and death...
, The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
and Being Human
Being Human (TV series)
Being Human is a British supernatural drama television series. It was created and written by Toby Whithouse and is currently broadcast on BBC Three. The show blends elements of flatshare comedy and horror drama...
. He will work with cinematographer Thomas Burton.
They started shooting in Ystad
Ystad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
on Wednesday 12,October 2011. The first days of shooting will be stunts and scenes with an animal trainer as Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
does not arrive until Monday 17. Scenes were also shot at The chemistry hall at the Macklean School in Skurup Municipality
Skurup Municipality
Skurup Municipality is a municipality in Skåne County in southern Sweden. Its seat is located in the town Skurup. It is considered part of Greater Malmö by Statistics Sweden....
. With the local fire squad
Firefighter
Firefighters are rescuers extensively trained primarily to put out hazardous fires that threaten civilian populations and property, to rescue people from car incidents, collapsed and burning buildings and other such situations...
on stand by, a stunt man poured petrol over himself and then sat himself on fire. This three minutes long film sequence started at Friday the 14 at 6 pm and wrapped up at 3.30 am on Saturday morning. The film crew will be back at the end of October
October
October is the tenth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of seven months with a length of 31 days. The eighth month in the old Roman calendar, October retained its name after January and February were inserted into the calendar that had originally been created by the...
to shoot a scene using headmaster Christin Stigborgs office. From Tuesday, October 24 and till the end of the week, three streets in central Ystad
Ystad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
(Lilla Norregatan, Stora Norregatan and Sladdergatan) had to be closed down for a short ammount of time to shoot several scenes.
Parts of this film were shot in the Snogeholm nature conservation area, Sjöbo Municipality
Sjöbo Municipality
Sjöbo Municipality is a municipality in Skåne County in southern Sweden. Its seat is located in the town Sjöbo.The present municipality was created in 1974 when the former market town Sjöbo was amalgamated with the surrounding rural municipalities...
. The filming took place for several days along the roads and a parking space. This was mainly shots of the environment and the nature of the conversation area and the Snogeholm lake, according to production manager Martin Ersgård.
An Event in Autumn will be the last film to shoot. Filming will start Monday, November 14 and will be directed by Toby Haynes
Toby Haynes
Toby Haynes is a British television director, notable for his work on Doctor Who, Five Days, Being Human and M.I. High.He is a graduate of the National Film and Television School.-Credits:-External links:* at the Curtis Brown Agency...
of Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, Sherlock and Being Human
Being Human (TV series)
Being Human is a British supernatural drama television series. It was created and written by Toby Whithouse and is currently broadcast on BBC Three. The show blends elements of flatshare comedy and horror drama...
fame. According to Yellow Bird
Yellow Bird (company)
Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company founded by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell and film-producers Ole Søndberg and Lars Björkman. The company was founded to produce films based on Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. Yellow Bird was sold to Danish media house Zodiak...
producer Daniel Ahlqvist, An Event In Autumn is about how "Kurt tries to take charge of his own life by getting a new house but gets interrupted and is more or less forced back to his job".
On October 21 and 23 the crew was filming at an old small farm in the small village
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
of Svarte
Svarte
Svarte is a locality situated in Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 836 inhabitants in 2005....
. It is located around the corner from the house were Kurt Wallander's father lived in the previous films. Local farmer Wilhelm von Platen spent the two days teaching one of the actors how to drive a tractor
Tractor
A tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...
. The small farm house is Wallander's new home but the remains of a dead woman are found on the property. Producer Hillary Benson explained to the local newspaper that this film will wrap on December
December
December is the 12th and last month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of seven months with the length of 31 days.December starts on the same day as September every year and ends on the same day as April every year.-Etymology:...
14 and will air in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in March 2012. Due to time constraints, all scenes were filmed with two cameras, unusual for a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
production, to provide more material for post production and cutting.
With the previous two series, the Skåne Regional Council
Skåne Regional Council
The Skåne Regional Council is the County Council of Skåne County in Sweden.Region Skåne was created on January 1, 1999, by the amalgamation of the County councils of Malmöhus County and Kristianstad County and some of the tasks handled by Malmö Municipality.Its county assembly is the highest...
invested 7 and 8 million Swedish kronor through its subsidiary Film i Skåne. With the third series, the Skåne Regional Council
Skåne Regional Council
The Skåne Regional Council is the County Council of Skåne County in Sweden.Region Skåne was created on January 1, 1999, by the amalgamation of the County councils of Malmöhus County and Kristianstad County and some of the tasks handled by Malmö Municipality.Its county assembly is the highest...
only wanted to invest 2 million kronor. They later signed on to support the production by other means such as letting BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
& Yellow Bird
Yellow Bird (company)
Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company founded by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell and film-producers Ole Søndberg and Lars Björkman. The company was founded to produce films based on Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. Yellow Bird was sold to Danish media house Zodiak...
use Ystad Studios for free, worth about half a million Swedish kronor.
City of Ystad-Österlens Film Bond also invested 2 million Swedish kronor.
Broadcast
A public screening of Sidetracked was given by the British Academy of Film and Television ArtsBritish Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
on 10 November 2008, and was followed by a question-and-answer session with Philip Martin and Kenneth Branagh. A gala premiere of Sidetracked was held in Ystad on 23 November, a week before it was broadcast in Britain. Sidetrackeds 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
BBC HD
BBC HD is a high-definition television network provided by the BBC. The service was initially run as a trial from 15 May 2006 until becoming a full service on 1 December 2007...
. BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
broadcast programmes and films to complement the series; the schedule included a documentary by John Harvey
John Harvey (author)
John Harvey is a British author of crime fiction most famous for his series of jazz-influenced Charlie Resnick novels, based in the City of Nottingham.-Writing Career:...
entitled Who is Kurt Wallander, as well as the Swedish adaptation of the Linda Wallander novel Before the Frost
Before the Frost
Before the Frost is a novel by Swedish crime-writer Henning Mankell.The main protagonist is Linda Wallander, daughter of Inspector Wallander...
, and Mastermind, an installment of the Mankell's Wallander film series starring Krister Henriksson
Krister Henriksson
Jan Krister Allan Henriksson is a Swedish actor. He is best known for playing Kurt Wallander in a series of television movies based on the novels by Henning Mankell.- Biography :...
.
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 M6, Canada, Slovenia, Australia, Lumiere Benelux and Svensk Film for its pan Scandinavian feed. BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. In the year to 31 March 2010 it made a profit of £145m on a turnover of £1.074bn. The company had made a profit of £106m...
, the BBC's commercial arm, sold the series to further buyers at the Mipcom
Mipcom
-MIPCOM:MIPCOM is a TV and entertainment market which is held in the town of Cannes once every year, normally in October.It is essentially a content event for co-producing, buying, selling, financing and distributing entertainment content...
television festival in October 2008. In the United States, PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
secured the broadcast rights through the co-production deal struck between its affiliate WGBH Boston
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
and the BBC. It aired as part of WGBH's Masterpiece Mystery! in May 2009. 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. In Germany, ARD broadcast the first series episodes on 29 and 30 May, and 1 June 2009. TV4 broadcast the first series in Sweden from 11 October 2009.
Critical reaction
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". Previewing Sidetracked, The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
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". In a feature in The Knowledge, a supplement of The Times, Paul Hoggart
Paul Hoggart
Paul Hoggart is an English television critic and columnist. He is the youngest son of Richard Hoggart and brother of political journalist Simon Hoggart. His sister, Nicola, is a teacher.-Early life and Career:...
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". At the time the series was commissioned, Scottish author Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin, OBE, DL , is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.-Background:He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath...
expressed disappointment to The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
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".
Reviewing Sidetracked after it aired, Tom Sutcliffe
Tom Sutcliffe (broadcaster)
Thomas Sutcliffe is a British journalist and arts broadcaster.Sutcliffe studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge...
for The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
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
Weltschmerz
Weltschmerz is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind...
just another detective gimmick". The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
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". 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. 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", though Cochrane called it a "familiar element". In The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, 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." The broadcast had an average 6.2 million viewers and 23.9% audience share. 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. Final ratings, incorporating those who watched via DVR
Digital video recorder
A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
, was 6.54 million, making it the eighth-most-watched programme on BBC One that week. An editorial in The Independent complained that the episode's closing credits ran too fast; a hundred names were displayed in 14 seconds. Branagh called the speed of the credits "insulting". The actors' union Equity also complained to BBC director general Mark Thompson
Mark Thompson
Mark John Thompson is Director-General of the BBC, a post he has held since 2004, and a former chief executive of Channel 4...
.
Firewall was seen by 5.6 million (23% share), 600,000 viewers and one share point down on the previous week. Final ratings boosted it to 5.90 million and the tenth-most-watched broadcast on BBC One that week. 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." 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". 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." One Step Behind received overnight ratings of 5.6 million (22.4%). Final ratings were recorded as 5.66 million, making it the week's twelfth-most-watched programme on BBC One. 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". The Daily Record named it "Best of this week's TV" 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.
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 this Wallander version the real or proper Wallander), Martin Andersson of Southern Sweden’s main daily newspaper Sydsvenskan
Sydsvenskan
-External links:*...
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 of films. He emphasises that not only is Branagh’s performance of higher quality than the current Swedish Wallander actor Krister Henriksson
Krister Henriksson
Jan Krister Allan Henriksson is a Swedish actor. He is best known for playing Kurt Wallander in a series of television movies based on the novels by Henning Mankell.- Biography :...
, but the BBC series really understands 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.
Awards
Branagh won the award for best actor at the 35th Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio AwardsBroadcasting Press Guild
The Broadcasting Press Guild is a British association of journalists who specialise in writing and broadcasting about television, radio and the media generally....
(2009). It is his first major television award win in the UK. The series was nominated for Best Drama Series but lost to The Devil's Whore
The Devil's Whore
The Devil's Whore is a four-part television series set during the English Civil War, produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4 in 2008. It centres on the adventures of the fictional Angelica Fanshawe, and the historical Leveller soldier Edward Sexby...
. The series, represented by Sidetracked, won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series
British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series
The British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series is one of the major categories of the British Academy Television Awards , the primary awards ceremony of the British television industry...
. Richard Cottan, Kenneth Branagh, Philip Martin and Francis Hopkinson are named as the nomination recipients. 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.
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
61st Primetime Emmy Awards
The 61st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards took place on September 20, 2009. CBS broadcast the Primetime event and E! the Creative Arts event; both take place at Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The nominations for the Awards were announced on July 16....
. 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. Kenneth Branagh has been placed on longlist in the Best Actor category of the 2010 National Television Awards
National Television Awards
The National Television Awards is a British television awards ceremony, broadcast by the ITV network and initiated in 1995. The National Television Awards are the most prominent ceremony for which the results are voted on by the general public. Because of the way the awards are decided, winners are...
. The series was nominated for The TV Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards.
In November 2009, the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
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
Emily Barker
Emily Barker is a guitarist and singer-songwriter born in Bridgetown, Western Australia. With chamber-folk trio The Red Clay Halo, she has recorded three albums: Photos.Fires.Fables. , Despite The Snow and Almanac...
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. The series has been nominated in the Best Drama Series/Serial category at the Broadcast Awards 2010. The International Press Academy
International Press Academy
The International Press Academy is a large and diverse association of professional entertainment journalists, representing both domestic and foreign markets in print, television, radio, cable and new media outlets. The academy was founded in 1996 by Mirjana Van Blaricom...
has nominated the series for the Satellite Award for Best Miniseries
Satellite Award for Best Miniseries
The Satellite Award for Best Miniseries is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s : 2000: American Tragedy*The Corner*The Beach Boys: An American Family*Jason and the Argonauts...
and Branagh for the Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Hollywood Foreign Press Association
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is an organization composed of working journalists who cover the United States film industry for a variety of outlets, including newspapers and magazines in Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America. Today, the 90 members of the HFPA represent at least 55...
has nominated Branagh for the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film for his performance in One Step Behind.
Effect on the Wallander franchise
In a Radio TimesRadio Times
Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...
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. The new and final Kurt Wallander book, The Troubled Man
The Troubled Man
The Troubled Man is a crime fiction novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, featuring police inspector Kurt Wallander. Mankell has announced that it is the final Wallander novel.- Synopsis :...
, was published in Swedish in August 2009.
The increase in sales of the novels already published in the UK was also attributed to the television series.
Due to the success of the BBC series, Yellow Bird
Yellow Bird (company)
Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company founded by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell and film-producers Ole Søndberg and Lars Björkman. The company was founded to produce films based on Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. Yellow Bird was sold to Danish media house Zodiak...
is now perusing the possibility of developing a French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
series.
Effect on Ystad
The series has resulted in a new interest among British tourists to visit Sweden, and especially Ystad and the Skåne province according to Itta Johnson, Marketing Strategist with YstadYstad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
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%. 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.
Itta 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.
“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
Ystad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
tourism agency. “This year (2009) we have 30% more hotel bookings from Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, compared to last year. Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
says many good things about this town and we have received many requests from British press”. Jolanta Olsson, tourism coordinator with Ystad
Ystad
Ystad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
tourism agency, says they get many requests from visiting Britons concerning shooting locations and where the film crew reside.
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.
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.
Merchandise
Vintage has published paperbacks of the adapted novels with tie-in covers featuring Kenneth Branagh. The DVD was published by 2 Entertain Video on 26 December 2008. It features all three films, the Who is Kurt Wallander? documentary, and a 55-minute documentary entitled The Wallander Look. Half of The Wallander Look features Branagh and Mankell discussing Wallander. The DVD was released in the United States on 2 June 2009.The second series was released on DVD 8 Feb 2010. Tie-in editions of the novels adapted for Series 2 will be published in February 2010.
Film
MankellHenning Mankell
Henning Mankell is a Swedish crime writer, children's author, leftist activist and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most famous creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander.-Life and career:...
and Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
have discussed future projects based on non-Wallander
Kurt Wallander
Kurt Wallander is a fictional character created by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell. The protagonist of several mystery novels, set in and around the town of Ystad, 60 km south-east of the city of Malmö, in the southern province of Skåne...
books. Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
told Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet
Aftonbladet
Aftonbladet is a Swedish tabloid founded by Lars Johan Hierta in 1830 during the modernization of Sweden. It is one of the larger daily newspapers in the Nordic countries. Aftonbladet is owned by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and Norwegian media group Schibsted, and its editorial page...
that he will star in an adaptation of Mankell's book Italian Shoes
Italian Shoes (novel)
Italian Shoes is a 2006 novel by Swedish writer Henning Mankell. The English translation is by Laurie Thompson and in contrast with Mankell's other well-known novels has been written in the first person.-Plot summary:...
to be directed and produced by Branagh. Filming will most likely start in Sweden, after the third season of Wallander has wrapped up.
Further reading
- Macnab, Geoffrey (31 July 2009). "Wallander: Swede dreams are made of this". The Independent (Independent News & Media): pp. 34–35 (Art & Books section).
- —A comparison between Wallander and Mankell's Wallander.
- Nicholson, Paul (December 2008). "Wallander and the BBC". High Definition (Media Maker Publishing) (34).
- —A detailed description of the cinematography and editing technology used on the series.
- Silberg, Jon (23 June 2009). "Red One No Mystery For DP Anthony Dod Mantle On 'Wallander'". DV Magazine (NewBay Media).
- —An interview with director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle about the series' camera setup.
- Tapper, Michael (April 2009). "'More than ABBA and skinny-dipping in mountain lakes': Swedish dystopia, Henning Mankell and the British Wallander series". Film International 7 (2): 60–69. ISSN: 1651-6826. doiDigital object identifierA digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found...
: 10.1386/fiin.7.2.60.
- Tapper, Michael (April 2009). "'More than ABBA and skinny-dipping in mountain lakes': Swedish dystopia, Henning Mankell and the British Wallander series". Film International 7 (2): 60–69. ISSN: 1651-6826. doi
- —An analysis of the political and social representation of Sweden in the novels and Wallander.
External links
- Wallander at Branagh's Wallander website
- Wallander at Yellow Bird PicturesYellow Bird (company)Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company founded by best-selling novelist Henning Mankell and film-producers Ole Søndberg and Lars Björkman. The company was founded to produce films based on Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. Yellow Bird was sold to Danish media house Zodiak...
(with trailer).
Videos
- Independent News & Media plc (December 2009). "Wallander Returns". The Independent Show: Interview with Branagh and preview. Retrieved on 4 January 2010.
- Jeffries, Stuart (27 December 2009). "Kenneth Branagh talks to Stuart Jeffries about the new series of Wallander". Guardian Web-TV. Retrieved on 4 January 2010.
- Branagh, Kenneth; et al.. Interview with Angellica Bell. Baftaonline YouTube channel. 26 April 2009.
- Panel discussion of the novels and adaptations. Newsnight Review. 1 December 2008.
- Filming Wallander in Ystad city square. Filming of The Man Who Smiled. Ystad Allehanda Webb-TV. 15 September 2009.
Interviews
- Geoghegan, Kev (1 January 2010). "Talking Shop: Kenneth Branagh". BBC News website. Retrieved on 1 January 2010.
Press releases
- BBC Press Office (10 January 2008). "Wallander–Kenneth Branagh in major new drama adaptation for BBC One". Press release. Retrieved on 18 April 2008.
- BBC Press Office (4 November 2008). "Killing time". Press release. Retrieved on 4 November 2008.