Wallander - The Revenge: review

I’ve just caught up with the first episode of the second series of Wallander, in its Swedish incarnation, with Krister Henriksson as the weary detective. The Revenge is a story which begins slowly, as the plot is unveiled in a slightly predictable fashion, but the second half is gripping and impressive.

The story begins with a black-out of the power system in Ystad. This rudely interrupts a crayfish party in which Kurt Wallander is enjoying himself, having just bought a nice house by the sea. The black-out coincides with a brutal machine gun murder, and since the victim had authorised an exhibition about the prophet Mohammed, fundamentalists top the list of suspects.

Seasoned watchers of crime shows know, however, that a terrorist explanation would be, in a very real sense, a cop-out. And so it proves here – the title of this episode is a rather large clue to the motivation behind the crime. As Wallander chums up with a nice lady prosecutor (who conveniently buys a house next door to his) further murders occur.

A minister visits Ystad, providing the opportunity for a very tense sequence when the culprit is revealed. The latter stages of this episode were strong and memorable. Wallander’s team may be somewhat depleted in this series, but the man himself is still in very good form.