A Monkey TV Review

PBS had been running some sumptuous BBC adaptations of some Charles Dickens novels on Masterpiece Theatre. We caught the whole run of Little Dorrit and The Old Curiosity Shop. And during that run we also watched the latest adaption of David Copperfield on DVD. We heartily enjoyed the Dickens out of all of them.

But a few weeks ago all that came to an end and what does PBS do for a follow up? They are running a series of mysteries based on the books of Henning Mankell. All of them star Kenneth Branagh as the world weary nearly alcoholic Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander.

I skipped the first one because I could not get past the fact that a bunch of British people had been cast to play Swedes. It got on my nerves. Plus I thought Branagh was playing Wallander as more put upon than world weary in the first movie.

Then I gave the second one a try last Sunday night. And you know what? I highly enjoyed it. This one was called Wallander: Firewall. As you can probably tell from the title computers figured into the plot very significantly. When the film began a teenage girl had brutally stabbed a cab driver to death and then as Wallander investigated that murder things got more out of control and more murders happened while a plot to bring down the world financial system was unmasked. Things got solved but not tidied up, and that's one of the reasons I like the mysteries of Henning Mankell, he takes into account the randomness and banality of crime and why people murder others. It's a different way of telling a mystery to be sure, Mankell is no Agatha Christie by any stretch of the imagination, and that's a good thing.

I'm still peeved about the fact that no one remotely tries a Swedish accent but all in all, this series of mysteries is very good. It's well filmed, it's atmospheric, it's well acted, and the adaptions of the novels are first rate. Based on my viewing of the second movie in this series I recommend this set of mysteries highly.