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Wallander
Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, one of the most symbolic figures in the Nordic crime noir. With all the somehow 'necessary' phenomena of a 'successful' police detective, he lives in a small social circle, enjoy drinks and listening to classic music as favourite habits, divorced with one estranged daughter. He is emotionally vulnerable but tough and stubborn like a bulldog. In a sense, he is the example of how an human being fights the cruelty of life with all the weakness of a living human.
From Krister Henriksson, Rolf Lassgård, to Kenneth Branagh, and then back to Henriksson, I always have a mixed feeling for Wallander. It was somehow intolerable in the beginning to watch. The emotional isolation, indifferenence and raw brutality in human nature, are amplified by the gray and cold scene of Ystad. It was an tormented viewing experience when looking into the primal states of humanity, but, to a degree, revealing and introspective. And that was something that the Branagh/British version cannot really provided.
(Eventually, Henriksson's interpretation becomes my preference. And, I was very pleased to have the honour to see him perform live on stage as 'Doktor Glas', in a London theatre. I was utterly thrilled to meet him afterward and had my first experience in Swedish play.)
Arne Dahl
An rapid response team that is composed by members across different police departments and with various expertises. The series opens with a serial killing of financial figures, and later on, the team is assigned to investigate any types of major crime in Sweden. Two interesting points of this drama are, first, the somehow-out-of-no-where Jazz connection; and secondly, the mysterious and magician-like office cleaner. Maybe simply to add some magical elements to the show (um, in a crime thriller, really?), the cleaner is introduced as some sort pressure-relieving character, who only appears when the leading cast members are in mental troubles. As for the implicit relation to Jazz music, well, one of the team members, Chavez, is a hardcore Jazz fan.
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On the Stage (2)
