The opening sequence is visually stunning and ultimately horrifying. It includes a scruffy, middle-aged man rushing through a field abloom in golden blossoms. For a sense of the field, think of the feature film Everything is Illuminated.
Only everything here is ominous, as the camera shows him running toward a teenage girl standing in the middle of the sea of gold who is holding what looks like a plastic jug of gasoline. As he waves his badge and screams for her to stop, the girl raises the jug over her head and starts to douse herself with the petrol.
And then, she clicks a cigarette lighter, and sets herself and all the lovely blossoms around her ablaze. And all the man and the viewer can do is look on in horror.
Welcome to the world of Wallander, the new Masterpiece-Mystery! British detective series starring Kenneth Branagh that makes its debut tonight on PBS. In a TV world where everything seems to be getting smaller and cheaper, with late-night talk shows replacing dramas in prime time, and low-rent reality TV replacing anything that requires a script, it is a joy to see a first-rate, high-quality production featuring a genuine star. And this star is bringing his best game to an intelligent script that deals with challenging, knotty, complicated issues and characters that mirror the real world in which we live.
Not that joy is going to be the first word any viewer is likely to think of once they've seen this BBC import. Wallander is dark, bleak and existential - even by my standards (and I love dark, bleak and existential detective dramas). But this one, set in the Swedish port city of Ystad (pronounced EE-stad), makes HBO's The Wire seem almost bright and cheery by comparison.
Random camera shots show goons beating and kicking people on downtown streets late at night. Medical examiners chat about a 5-year-old boy who tried to put his own eyes out, and a 7-year-old who tried to cut off his thumb - early experiments in self-destruction.
And, just in case the 15-year-old girl who burned to death wasn't gruesome enough, suddenly a rash of murder victims starts to appear in the pilot and each of them has been scalped - yes, scalped and not very cleanly.
