Wallander: And The Swedish Tourist Board Wept

"Every time he opens a door, I keep expecting there to be a cliff or something," said Monkey, suddenly.

He had a point. There are definite shades of Ingmar Bergman about Wallander, a show which flirts with surrealism and boredom in equal, fascinating measure. Is this inactivity sinisterly antmospheric or simply an absence of plot?

Kenneth Branagh wafts through the whole bizarre malarkey with his usual air of talent and egoism, meaning that for all the otherworldly feeling of Wallander, there is also a decided mood of "yeah, well, it's Kenneth. We never understand" about it. "You didn't get The Magic Flute?" Kenneth asks. "Well, suck this up, you lazy, voyeuristic bastards who tune in to watch murder and crash out on a Sunday evening from your living rooms in Shropshire. You're about to be kicked up the arse." Yes, Kenneth is adopting the Trojan Horse method in his campaign to bring cinematic Art to the British people, whether they like it or not. People who have a certain soft spot for Foyle's War are abruptly viewers of Scandinavian surrealism, thinking "well...I expect it's good for me", in slight fascinated dismay.

Anyway, Wallander succeeded in its self-proclaimed aim to prove there is more to Sweden than Abba and Bjorn Borg. (And Ikea, but they didn' t mention that because it's the BBC. Other suppliers of flat-packed furniture are available). No - there are also plentiful fields of rape (plant rape, not...you know), grisly murders in unlikely rural locations, and weepy detectives who seem not to be hardened to the challenges of the job after a lifetime. Oh, and cute bullied underlings.

Let's not go there.