Swedish sensation (From Messenger Newspapers)

Swedish sensation

1:03pm Tuesday 9th December 2008

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AT last Sunday night TV has a drama worthy of the name in the form of Wallander (BBC1).

Who would have thought the land of IKEA could be such a hotbed of violent crime?

In the first two episodes we have had a girl setting herself alight, a taxi driver being stabbed to death, a young girl being fried by electricity and a dead man's hands and feet being chopped off. Not for the squeamish!

Kenneth Branagh excels as tortured Swedish detective Kurt Wallander. He brings the character to life so perfectly that you forget he is an actor playing the part.

In the books on which the series is based, Wallander is an even darker character, on the verge of suicide as the end of his marriage approaches with divorce being imminent.

Branagh exudes the weariness of a man facing the disintergration of his private life, while dealing with the most gruesome of murder cases.

The only light in his life is his daughter Linda, who tries to encourage him to move on with his life.

Her matchmaking effort in Sunday's episode, however, almost led to her father's demise, as the woman involved turned out to be part of a terrorist group planning to bring down global financial markets by hacking into computer systems.

The trigger for the deletion of data from banks and financial institutions across the world involved the chief terrorist using a cash machine, and here was my minor quibble with Wallander.

The detective pitched up at just the right cash machine in time to stop this cataclysmic act from taking place. Now either there is only one ATM in that particular town or Wallander is the luckiest detective in Sweden!

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