You may have seen elsewhere on this site that I am a big fan of Kenneth Branagh. And he didn't fail to impress me again in the BBC's WALLANDER, in the first of three feature length adaptations of Henning Mankell's Swedish detective novels screened on Sunday.
Actually, I thought SIDETRACKED's storyline traced a tiring and well-trodden path in its exposure of a vice ring, bringing in the great and not-so-good of society and a family wrecked by abuse. It is here that the killer sprang, motivated by some obscure American Indian revenge ritual, who turned out to be Tony from SKINS.
What did make the episode remarkable was Branagh's brittle, glassy-eyed portrayal of Wallander. Jowly, exhausted, and strung out in an emotional wasteland, he brought an emotional sensitivity and empathy to his characterisation which took it into another realm from the standard hardbitten and emotionally bankrupt TV cop.
His pale, near-spectral presence was well complimented by the cinematography, which gave everything a dreamlike wash, draining the screen of colour one moment or flooding it with Swedish blues and yellows the next. So credit is due to director Philip Martin and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who used the digital RED ONE camera for the first time in a British television series to achieve this effect.
