Inspector
Kurt Wallander might have the most annoying ringtone ever. He would not mind changing it, but he is not
a gadget guy. His specialty is the dark
recesses of the human soul. The Swedish
detective will be put through the psychological wringer again in the third
season of Wallander (promo here), which premieres tomorrow
night as part of the current season of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery.
As
the season opening An Event in Autumn begins,
Wallander is trying to pull his act together and start a new chapter in his
life. Together with his lover Vanja and
her young son, he has moved into a comfily restored farmhouse. Yet, then the dog goes and digs up a dead
body in their front bushes. Wallander
reacts rather badly when the site of his hoped for domestic tranquility becomes
a crime scene. It also brings him into
conflict with the seedy former tenant, whom Wallander suspects, but cannot pin
anything on. Things really get bad when
a colleague is gravely injured, partly due to Wallander’s recklessness. As you might expect, he takes this turn of
events rather badly. However, his other
active investigation starts to overlap with the case of the corpse in his yard.
Autumn is absolutely
vintage Wallander, filled to the brim with his angst and self-recriminations,
with everything he says making matters worse.
Though grim even Wallander’s standards, it is a pretty solid crime
story. However, Sakia Reeves’ Vanja gets
a bit tiresome. After all, what does she
expect from Kurt Wallander?
The
clear high point of season three comes with the middle episode, The Dogs of Riga (airing 9/16). Now shockingly living on his own, Wallander
meets an even more miserable copper when Major Karlis Liepa of the Latvian
police comes to inspect the bodies of some Russian gangsters that washed up on
shore. It turns out the victims were his
confidential informers and members of his own force were probably responsible
for their murders. When the world weary
Major also meets an untimely end, Wallander is sent to assist the Latvian
police. It is hard to tell the cops
apart from the gangsters, but they are all hassling Liepa’s widow Kristina, looking
for his case notes.
While
the Baltics are still pretty Nordic, both in terms of climate and temperament,
the change of scenery does Wallander
the series and character good. It gives
director Esther Campbell an opportunity to stage some respectable cat-and-mouse
games and Branagh quickly develops some nice chemistry with Rebekah Staton’s
unmerry widow. There is also an
intriguing plot point involving the old archives of the Soviet-era secret police
that adds some historical perspective.
It also features one of the overall series’ best guest-star performances
from Søren Malling as the soon to be late Major.
Unfortunately,
Riga is followed by Before the Frost, a series low point
that thoroughly reflects Wallander author Henning Mankell’s strident
leftism. A childhood friend of Wallander’s
semi-estranged daughter comes looking for help, but he inadvertently pushes her
away with his clumsy interpersonal skills.
He will soon be desperate to find her, fearing the worst about the
Christian doomsday cult she has fallen in with.
It is pretty clear Mankell considers Sweden’s biggest problem to be a
surfeit of Christianity and anyone believing in Creationism is a potential
terrorist waiting to snap. Frankly, Frost is so didactic, it gets rather
silly (and distracting). For fans
though, at least it reveals a bit more of Wallander’s backstory.
