Discussion Series / Wallander

Excuse the untidiness! I'm playing with breaking up this page into subcategories.

Swedish author Henning Mankell's popular series of crime novels follow Kurt Wallander, a middle-aged, diabetic inspector who is often up against both criminals and his own demons.

The novels became the basis of several film and TV adaptations: a film series starring Rolf Lassgård as the titular character, a Swedish television series was produced starring Krister Henriksson, and most recently an English-language adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh.

The English adaptation is very unique in its use of Translation Convention. Filmed in Ystad, the Swedish setting of the novels, it renders all spoken dialogue into English (complete with idioms like "done time"), but keeps all on-screen written text in Swedish.

• Defective Detective: Wallander, who looks like he's about to cry in every scene.
• Deus Angst Machina: While True Art Is Angsty, this series could possibly be called "Wallander's Horrible Life".
• Fair Cop: Anne-Britt Hoglund
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: The television series, both Swedish and English, feature this on occasion.
• Red Shirt: Pontus, if only through his lack of fear of danger...
• Sounding It Out: Wallander reads out an email that we see written in Swedish in English for the audience's benefit
• Trauma Conga Line: If Wallander ever felt real happiness, the world would probably end or something.
• The Woobie: Wallander, definitely.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Wallander is impressed by Harderberg's philanthropic work for impoverished children in Africa. He clearly feels that the man is a ray of goodness in an all-too-grim world. He even smiles a bit! And then it turns out Harderberg's foundation is a front for black market organ dealing, and he's probably had some of those adorable kids in the photos slaughtered for parts. Yeah.

The Lassgård TV series provides examples of:

• Yank the Dog's Chain: In "Mannen som log", during a rough patch with his girlfriend, Kurt meets a beautiful, sympathetic woman in a bar as he's drowning his sorrows. They have sex. Then she wants her money.

The Henriksson film series provides examples of:

• Norse by Norsewest: Averted! For one, brunettes abound.

The Branagh television series provides examples of:

• Translation Convention:
  • Ystad's pronunciation is altered (from "ee-stad" to "eah-stad") to sound less silly to English ears.
  • One notable case in "Firewall" in which the on-screen status data of a computer specialist is in English, but it's entirely plausible for someone in a country where English is a second language of most of the population to do that.
  • Wallander's name is pronounced "Wall-and-er" in the Branagh version, but in the Henriksson its "Val-and-air".
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Most recently, 'The Man Who Smiled', if you're watching along Stateside, features Rupert Graves as Harderberg.
• You Look Familiar: A Swedish nationalist that Wallander shoots dead is played by Fredrik Gunnarsson, who is in the Swedish version as Officer Svartmann!
• The Woobie: Branagh himself has said he wants to buy Wallander a beer and tell him it will be okay.

As per a discussion in Ask The Tropers, the Kurt Wallander page (which was a stub and languishing on Needs Wiki Magic Love) now redirects here!

For now, I've added a very brief introduction to the various Wallander adaptations to this page. I'm still not entirely sure it's the right solution for a series spanning books/films/television but it'll do for the time being, at least until/if the Literature/Wallander and Film/Wallander pages are built. The Main/Wallander space is also free, but current policy, as I understand it, is moving away from entering things in Main.