- Description
A conversation with actor Kenneth Branagh about “Wallender” part of PBS’s “Maserpiece Mystery” series
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jacquelina77 05/28/2009 11:11 PM Report
Absolutely no insights here. Mr. Branagh is a surprisingly dull interview. Tremendous vision and energy in his Shakespeare work, but here he's just cycling through the usual me-me life-life celebrity platitudes, albeit in a warm and jolly way.
ishml 05/18/2009 06:55 PM Report
Perhaps TS Eliot lived a life of quiet desperation. But he didn't say it. Thoreau did.
tartufe 05/13/2009 05:43 PM Report
WOW REMant. How do you have time to read and watch tv - PBS et al? Does your biodata include a professorship - at William & Mary? You've impressed me, which with several coins of the realm will gain you a cup of coffee. Keep it coming. It sends me to Google more than usual.
REMant 05/13/2009 01:22 PM Report
I don't know the rest of Branagh's work, except, I discover from IMDb, for Fortunes of War, in which I can't remember him, but I have seen these BBC Wallander episodes already, and most of the Swedish TV Wallander series beginning in 1994, and there's no doubt in my mind that the latter is better, Rolf Lassgård and, from 2005, Krister Henriksson playing the leading role in a much more realistic and sympathetic fashion. Altho the BBC series has typically good production values, Branagh's Wallander is an overwrought, unshaved neurotic, and that, combined with Mankell's increasing weirdness and penchant for gratuitous violence, makes, it seems to me, for Sweden appear a not very desirable tourist destination. This also strikes me as a sad example of commerical and intellectual trespass. As a critic of the Swedish welfare state and detective story writer, Mankell was preceded an entire generation earlier by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö with their Martin Beck novels, produced for Swedish TV beginning in 1993, and continuing to date, with Lassgård initially in a major role. There are many good European mystery series, BTW, some even in English, sans subtitles, which PBS has eschewed, appearing here only on A&E, the fledgling MHz Network, or DVD, for example: A Touch of Frost, Midsomer Murders, Dalziel and Pascoe, Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford, Cracker, Rebus, Waking the Dead, Silent Witness, Montalbano, La Omicidi, Maigret, Tatort, RAID, and the aforementioned Martin Beck. The hilarious Finnish TV series (and full length sequel) RAID also a populist critique, is, I might add, one of the best shows I have ever seen. (NB- it is on DVD, go find it and see for yourself.) There are, of course, many American detective novel series that haven't been brought to the parlor screen, or at least not in their entirety, a glaring example being John Macdonald's Travis Magee, and I think it has to be chalked up as another instance of the lack of American productivity. We either buy them from abroad, remake foreign films, rerun okd stuff, or, most often, couldn't be bothered. The commercial stations seem to be heavily into gambling in form or other. PBS seem to be lazy snots. The only series I can recall being done by PBS was Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn novels set near a Navajo reservation, and I suppose this, along with its proximity to Hollywood, being the reason it was produced. Aside from the British royal family, PBS seems to favor shows retailing the oppression of women, children, Jews and minorities. In this they are not alone. Some years ago, when I had ready access to an academic library, I used regularly to read the premier journal in American colonial history, William & Mary Quarterly, from which I learned a great deal about politics and religion, but later when I moved and was forced to get a subscription of my own I discovered every issue was now only about - you guessed it - women, slaves and Indians. (I cancelled the subscription, BTW.) And, it should be noted, that none of these shows are self-critical like the Scandanavians, but rather intended to demonize others.