Sometimes, there’s nothing quite as sad as the sea. It’s pleasant enough if you’re staring at an endless expanse of blue-green stillness from a sundrenched Mediterranean beach, and it can be pretty stirring if you’re watching the waves breaking over stones like Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
But if you’re Detective Kurt Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) – the most melancholy man in Sweden apart from the government official who thought handing over control of the nation’s Twitter feed to Sonja Abrahamsson was a good idea – the sea is just a big, grey, wobbly thing with freight terminals on either side and Polish prostitutes being murdered on ferries in the middle, and it’s bloody depressing.
Wallander being Wallander, of course, has bought a sea-view country cottage – presumably so he can stare mournfully at the coast through the endless autumnal showers – and to make things even more wretched, his dog discovers a corpse buried under the blackcurrant bushes.
New girlfriend Vanja Andersson (Saskia Reeves), who harbours delusional notions that moving into a rural retreat together will somehow change her fella into a more fun-loving, relaxed kind of guy, must be glad she kept her flat in town when she finds out the place is aptly named Black Heights. ‘I’m basically quite a cheerful person,’ Wallander quips dolefully at one point, but he’s not fooling anyone.
His disconsolation isn’t surprising, really. Besides the dead girls from Krakow and the body at the bottom of his garden, Wallander also has to cope with finding dismembered human limbs on a beach and seeing his sidekick Ann-Britt Höglund (Sarah Smart) walloped in the head with a lump hammer by a scrapyard-dwelling, Special Brew-swilling pervert.
The latter is made doubly dismal for Wallander by the fact that it’s his fault. He forgets the lesson learned in Stand by Me – never climb into waste-disposal areas owned by men with vicious dogs, because you’re only ever one ‘Chopper … sic balls!’ away from disaster – and the two cops end up in an uneven scrap with two Alsatians. Höglund shoots them and dirty dump-owner Jan Petrus (Con O’Neill) fetches her a coma-inducing crack around the bonce. Worst of all, he might be a horrendous scrote but he isn’t the murderer. Poor old Ann-Britt’s (fortunately non-fatal) injury was all for nothing.
Branagh is as expertly world-weary as ever, displaying depths of vulnerability and anguish without ever wallowing in his own weltschmerz or resorting to incessant histrionics to demonstrate his angst. The character’s gentle despair is captivating because of its quietness, and the one occasion when it does bubble over into actual anger – whilst interviewing the loathsome Petrus in the immediate aftermath of his attack on Höglund – is shocking because of its stark contrast with his ordinary demeanour. Then, and only then, do we see the raw emotion locked behind Wallander’s perpetually watery eyes.
Perhaps the greatest success of BBC One’s Wallander as a series is that, despite its lugubrious lead and the fact it seems to be filmed through a glacial filter that makes us see everything in the same, gloomy shades of blue and grey as its titular character, it’s not actually a depressing drama to watch. While you could never accuse it of being cheery, it’s certainly a very enjoyable way to spend a Sunday evening.
Aired at 9pm on Sunday 8th July 2012 on BBC One.
> Buy the Series 1-2 boxset on Amazon.
What did you think of the episode? Let us know below…