Season 1
Wallander is a British television crime drama mini-series adapted from Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels and starring Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous police inspector who investigates a series of violent and terrifying murders in Skane, southern Sweden.
The mini-series originally aired in the UK on BBC One from 30 November to 14 December, 2008. There are three 90-minute episodes in the series.
Wallander originally aired in South Africa on DStv's BBC Entertainment channel from Monday 29 June to Wednesday 1 July, 2009, nightly at 20h30.
A rebroadcast of Wallander airs on BBC Entertainment from Monday 28th to Wednesday 30th December 2009, nightly at 21h30.
Synopsis
Kenneth Branagh plays Swedish detective Kurt Wallander in three new single dramas based on the best-selling books by Henning Mankell.
The dramas follow Inspector Kurt Wallander - a middle-aged everyman - as he struggles against a rising tide of violence in the apparently sleepy backwaters in and around Ystad in Skane, southern Sweden.
In the first film, Sidetracked, a girl is seen wandering alone in a rapeseed field. Inspector Wallander is called to investigate.
Before his eyes, the girl douses herself in petrol and burns to death - the event is both shocking and baffling for Wallander. A hunt for the girl’s identity begins.
On the home front, Wallander, recently estranged from his wife, has moved into his own place. Linda, his grown-up daughter, is keeping an eye on her dad as he adjusts to bachelor life.
Wallander’s relationship with his own father, Povel, is difficult and, as it becomes clear that Povel’s health is in decline, Wallander strives for reconciliation with him.
Meanwhile, Wallander’s workload soars as three apparently motiveless murders are committed.
The victims are all male: a former minister of justice, a small-time criminal and a rich playboy. All are viciously killed, their scalps inexplicably taken.
Wallander and his team investigate, determined to discover who the killer is and how these murders are connected.
Episodes
Episode 1: Sidetracked
What connects the shocking suicide of a young woman and the vicious murder of a government minister? Inspector Kurt Wallander's investigation uncovers wrongdoing and corruption that extends to the heart of the Swedish establishment.
Episode 2: Firewall
A body is found at a cash point, the apparent victim of a heart attack. Two teenage girls are arrested for the brutal murder of a cab driver. The girls confess to the crime, showing no remorse. Two open and shut cases.
At first these two incidents seem to have nothing in common, but as Wallander delves deeper into the mystery of why the girls murdered the cab driver, he begins to unravel a plot much more involved complicated than he initially suspected.
The two cases become one, and lead to a conspiracy that stretches beyond the borders of Sweden.
Episode 3: One Step Behind
On Midsummer's Eve, three teenagers dressed in eighteenth-century fancy dress are shot dead in a secluded wood. One of Inspector Kurt Wallander's colleagues turns up dead, someone whose help he hoped to rely on to help solve the crime.
Wallander knows the murders are related. But with his only clue a photograph of a woman no one in Sweden seems to know, he cannot begin to imagine how.
Wallander is locked in a desperate effort to catch the killer before he strikes again. Wallander always seems to be just one step behind.