Happy Valley (BBC One) and Hinterland (BBC 4) - TV reviews

Happy Valley, on BBC One, and Hinterland, on BBC Four, have now been running for three episodes each. Happy Valley is a single story, divided into hour-long episodes, whereas Hinterland features a different case over an hour and a half each week, but although the two shows are quite distinct, they have some things in common, most importantly good writing. From a personal point of view, I'm familiar with (and very keen on) the settings of both shows. Happy Valley is filmed around the Hebden Bridge area, the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire, close to the Pennines. Hinterland is set in and around Aberystwyth, and features places like Borth and Devil's Bridge as well as the beautiful, if often brooding, Welsh landscape.

Some critics have compared the bleak mood of Hinterland with that of the various Scandinavian noir shows that have proliferated in recent years, and it doesn't suffer by comparison.This is an unusual show, because the stories were shot first in Welsh and then in English, which must have been hard work for everyone involved, but the result is worthwhile. Hinterland may lack a Kenneth Branagh, but to my mind, mid-Wales is at least as enticing a backdrop for a crime series as anywhere in Scandinavia, and I'm surprised we've had to wait so long for it to be used to such good effect. I don't think the quality of the murder mystery plots is quite at the level of those of, say, the Wallander stories, and it's a shame that the interesting novels of Lindsey Ashford, who lives in Borth and has set her enjoyable books in that area, have not been adapted for television as yet. Overall, though, Hinterland is definitely worth watching.

Happy Valley unquestionably delivers on plot, and much else besides. The series is written by the gifted Sally Wainwright, and stars Sarah Lancashire as the thoroughly decent small town detective who finds herself mixed up in a kidnapping case in which she has a personal reason to hate the worst of the bad guys. There were some uncertainties of tone in the first episode, in which an accountant makes a spur of the moment decision to encourage a criminal acquaintance to kidnap the daughter of his boss. At that point, I wondered if we were in for a black comedy, or perhaps some form of criminal quasi-soap opera (an unfeasible number of the characters suffer from serious illness or other misfortunes.) But since then, the story has settled down and become a powerful thriller with plenty of twists in the plot and subtlety in the characterisation.

Sarah Lancashire may be best known as a former soap star, but she is a very good actor, and her performance in Happy Valley is terrific. I'm also impressed by the way the dynamics in the relationships between the kidnappers are shifting. There are a few light moments, but on the whole, the story is pretty dark, and certainly gripping. I am really eager to watch next week's instalment.

Wallander - The Man Who Smiled: review

The Man Who Smiled is the first episode of Swedish TV’s version of Wallander that I’ve seen starring Rolf Lassgard in the title role. He was the original Wallander, and is arguably closer to Hanning Mankell's character than his successors. Yet at first, I didn’t really take to his portrayal of the cop as something of a fat slob who goes to bed with a prostitute and then throws her out of his room.

However, the script was rather well written, and subtleties emerged in the story and characterisation that were not immediately apparent - especially to me, as I've not read the book. Although Wallander’s behaviour eventually cost him his relationship with his colleague Maja, Lassgard grew on me as the programme went on.

The story is complicated and unusual, beginning in true Henning Mankell style with an eerie and memorable scene – an old man who is driving his car in the rain, stops when he comes face to face with a mysterious South American figure. Needless to say, he does not survive the encounter.

The ending was fairly downbeat, in a way that is far from traditional, yet seemed believable. There were plenty of vivid moments throughout, and on the whole – even though I still think I prefer Krister Henriksson as Wallander - I felt this was an extremely watchable episode.

Helsinki and Stockholm

The last two ports of call on my recent cruise were the capitals of Finland and Sweden respectively. I hadn’t done any research in advance, so I didn’t know what to expect of Helsinki. I thought it might be rather an anti-climax after St Petersburg. But in fact, I liked it very much. As always, a sunny day helped a good deal, and my only regret was not managing to fit in a boat tour round the city’s waterfront – always a good way to see a place.

Such a tour was a real highlight of the final stop, at Stockholm. A full day’s excursion took in the Old Town (very appealing, if not quite as magical as Tallinn) and the Vasa Museum, featuring a rescued and restored ship, before a long journey around the waterways which provided a spectacular perspective on a very green and attractive-looking city.

I’ve not read any Finnish crime stories, but of course Sweden has become a key location for some of the best and most popular books in the genre, something nobody would have foreseen a generation ago. I’ve had the impression of a rather melancholy place, a view perhaps inspired by Martin Beck’s ulcer and Wallander’s gloomy ruminations, and no doubt in winter, when the weather is cold and wet and the nights are long, it can be rather bleak. But last week, sunlit Stockholm seemed to me to be quite magnificent.

Wallander - The Secret

I have caught up with the final episode of the Swedish TV series about Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander. This was The Secret, and it has to rank as about the darkest episode in a television cop series that I’ve ever seen. Not easy viewing, but impressively done.

The story involves the abduction and murder of an 11 year old boy. Early scenes also detail the abuse of another young boy. Wallander and his team soon identify a prime suspect, but he is found murdered. By this time, Stefan (brilliantly played by Ola Rapace) has become very personally involved in the case. He knows the dead boy’s father, but this does not seem to explain the depth of his rage about the crime.

A retired cop who was associated with the dead suspect comes into the frame. He appears to be a sinister character, but it turns out that he has a track record of pursuing paedophiles with considerable success. However, there are further twists in the story before the traumatic final moments of the story.

I found this series – and I watched almost all of the 13 episodes, something I don’t often manage to do – exceptionally good viewing. At its best, it was outstanding, and even the weaker story-lines were competently done. Krister Henriksson was superb as Wallander, but part of the strength of the series lay in the quality of the supporting cast, notably Rapace and Johanna Sallstrom as Linda Wallander. Others have written about the sad death of Sallstrom after the series was filmed. Suffice to say that hers is a tragic story, and a great loss.

Before the Frost

Swedish television adapted Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander books for the small screen before the BBC got there with the recent series starring Kenneth Branagh. Thanks to Roger Cornwell of Cornwell Internet, I’ve just watched one of the shows, Before The Frost.

I haven’t read the book which sourced the tv programme, but I did find it enjoyable viewing. The actor who plays Wallander, Krister Henriksson, is less obviously charismatic than Branagh, but I liked his rather shambolic interpretation. The story features the cop’s daughter, Linda, who joins her father’s police force only to become personally involved in a bizarre mystery with origins in a horrific real-life event.

Like a number of other Mankells, this one opens with a vivid, horrific and baffling scene – an attack on swans. This is witnessed by an elderly woman who is out mapping abandoned pathways through the woodland. She suffers an accident and is incapacitated, making her easy prey for the villain of the piece. When her daughter reports her missing, Wallander comes on to the scene.

It’s a dark story, but compelling, and as usual insight is offered into a particular aspect of society of which Mankell disapproves – to say more would be giving too much away. I’m glad to have seen it – thanks, Roger.

Who is Kurt Wallander?

To accompany the high profile new series of 'Wallander', the BBC has produced an interesting documentary about the character, and his creator, Henning Mankell. The programme featured John Harvey visiting Sweden and interviewing Mankell and some of his admirers, along with a few comments from crime novelists Jeffrey Deaver and Ann Cleeves.

Although I’ve been interested in Mankell’s books for a number of years, I haven’t read many, and I learned a good deal more about him and his approach to writing from this programme. The context of the books, the changes (not all for the better) within Swedish society over the years, was also portrayed concisely yet informatively.

Mankell’s debt to Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, creators of that earlier melancholy Swedish cop Martin Beck, was acknowledged (as was the fact that Sjowall and Wahloo in turn owed much to the lead given by Ed McBain, the American mastera of police procedure.) He came over as an interesting and humane man, who has devoted a fair slice of the fortune he has earned to literacy and health projects in Africa that are plainly very close to his heart.

I’ve never visited Sweden, but the programme made me want to go there (at the height of summer, mind you) and also to read more Mankell.

Wallander

I enjoyed the first episode of the BBC’s major new series 'Wallander', watching it belatedly as usual. Kenneth Branagh heads a top-notch cast and I felt he caught the humanity of the Swedish detective very well.

The story chosen to introduce the series was not the first Wallander book that Henning Mankell wrote, but rather his CWA Gold Dagger winning novel Sidetracked. It was also the first Mankell that I read, and a good choice to open with, because of the startling and utterly shocking scene with which the story begins – a young girl walks into a rape field and sets fire to herself. It made a great impression on me when I read the story, and the televised version was equally powerful.

It may be heresy to say so, but in some ways I preferred the tv adaptation to the book. The pace was brisk, but more importantly, the build-up to the revelation of the identity of the culprit was handled more deftly. Wallander’s relationships with his father and daughter were nicely judged and the production values high. I shall certainly be watching more of 'Wallander'.