Intrepid Swedish police inspector Kurt Wallander and beautiful-but-dangerous Ystad FINALLY makes it back to TV in Miami again

EmilyBarkerandTRCH video: Nostalgia by Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo from their "Despite The Snow" album. Track was subsequently re-recorded with composer Martin Phipps and used as the theme to "Wallander," winning a Royal Television Society Award for best original theme and a BAFTA for best TV soundtrack.Uploaded on June 26, 2010. http://youtu.be/w098rz-rdiQ

See also: https://sites.google.com/a/blowupthenandnow.com/branagh-s-wallander/theme-music

Before you ask, yes, you're right, I was just thinking the same thing.

PBS has taken seemingly forever to catch-up on the English language TV series adaption of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels, starring Kenneth Branagh as the idealistic Swedish police inspector who investigates murder in the greater Ystad area of Skåne in southern Sweden, that has both its rural-but-beautiful charm as well as the Danish medieval old town area. (And many readers of the blog!)



BBCWorldwide video: Wallander's Revenge. Scenes of Ystad Square. Uploaded on March 5, 2010. http://youtu.be/0QpgFaCQOnc

Originally broadcast on BBC1, where it continues to air and Series 3 started up in early July, almost two years since the last episode of Series 2 was supposed to air in the U.S., this past Sunday we finally saw Season 3's series-opener An Event in Autumn.
Below, a preview of that episode.

Watch Wallander: An Event in Autumn Preview on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.

See the entire episode online here until October 9th: http://video.pbs.org/video/2276220740

This has been a particular problem far from both Albion and Wallander's Ystad, as where I live in South Florida, the Miami PBS station has NOT shown some of the series episodes from the previous two seasons, the last of which was supposed to air in October of 2010.

gogomezzz video: PBS "Wallander" Series 1, Episode 1- "Sidetracked" based on the 1999 novel  "Villospår," starring Kenneth Branagh as Police Inspector Kurt Wallander. Here, with David Warner as his father Povel Wallander, who suffers from Alzheimer's Disease. Uploaded on October 6, 2010. http://youtu.be/gXRjmsMpaA8 

I know because I've waited and waited and waited... only to hear about it from friends in other U.S. cities, while we in backwater South Florida were getting buried under an avalanche of WPBT's mishmash of programming geared to get elderly Anglophiles and elderly supporters of Israel to cough up some money during one of their all-too-frequent fundraising drives.

The last point is ironic given Mankell's well-known anti-Israel political sentiments, even to the point of having been a passenger and willing participant on one of the Palestinian Ship of Fools flotillas that never succeeded, but still, I wanted to see the shows -in order- and not have to buy the DVD to do that.

I've said it here before but it bears repeating: to me, compared to the options that are available to other PBS viewers in other parts of the country, WPBT-TV, Channel 2, based out of North Miami, is the worst-run PBS station of any American city I've ever lived in, given its resources and locale, and I know of what I speak.

It is so far from what it once was - entrepreneurial, opportunistic and community-minded.

That was back when I and some friends of mine in the pre-Cable TV mid-1970's, actually went around the North Miami Beach area trying to get local businesses -especially bars and restaurants- to contribute money to Channel 2 when they announced, quite out-of-the-blue, that IF they received enough money to purchase the rights, they would simulcast -wait for it- the NHL's Stanley Cup Finals. 

We succeeded, they aired it, we watched it in huge numbers -and the then-small number of sports bars were happy to have so many hockey fans showing up heir venues.

Everyone won, especially South Florida's sports fans.

The current management people making decisions at Channel 2 seem not capable of the sort of thinking outside-of-the-box that its former execs did to give South Florida programming that nobody else was offering us.

If they ever has a fastball, they've lost it, and it's clear that it's never coming back...

See also
BBC News
Sir Kenneth Branagh: Knighthood 'surreal'
18 June 2012 
Last updated at 10:03 ET 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18493574


In the Footsteps of Wallander: A Guide to Ystad and the surrounding area for fans of criminal inspector Kurt Wallander:
http://www.ystad.se/ystadweb.nsf/wwwpages/2B771FAB0A5A7DC9C125730700343C64/$File/wallander_pdf_english.pdf
To get an application for the above, download at App Store and Android Market. www.wallander.ystad.se


ystadweb video: The Film about Ystad (English version, HD). Uploaded March 11, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC8yRj9HJTQ

Unless something unusual happens in the next few weeks, like some crazy and wonderful invitation or completely out-of-the-blue opportunity presents itself, I won't be getting to Skåne on my upcoming trip to Sweden. 
Or Malmö or Göteborg.

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https://sites.google.com/a/blowupthenandnow.com/branagh-s-wallander/

http://www.emily-barker.com

http://www.henningmankell.com/

After Stieg Larsson, whom? April 2012 LA Times Magazine features stories on amazing Stockholm and some prominent Swedish crime novelists -and explains why you should be reading them!

Sweden.se video: Swedish Midsummer for Dummies. March 28, 2012.

http://youtu.be/u8ZLpGOOA1Q

Please take a peek when you can at these two pieces that appeared Sunday in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, a newspaper that for all of its problems -some chronicled here- unlike the Miami Herald, still runs a Sunday supplement that pleasantly surprises readers.

A magazine supplement that unlike others I could name, isn't larded with fashion photo shoots of B-list actors, stilted charity photos or all the entertainment and celeb stories that didn't make it into the paper during the week, which you promptly zip thru in three minutes.

That's not what advertisers want so there's almost always 3-4 things there worth checking out. 

Everything else being equal, for the popular Swedish crime novel authors mentioned so favorably below in the essay -who are, to be honest, mostly unknown to the average fiction reader in the United States- this positive PR in a major American newspaper definitely beats being just another name thrown on a long list of suggested "Summer Reading" in next month's issue in a newspaper somewhere across the country, since as we all know, "Summer Reading" sections are still one of the things that cause publishing houses to spend some coin in promotion, and not just the annual N.Y. Times issue.

(I've been reading that particular issue consistently since I was about 12 or 13 years-old. I even took a copy with me the last of the three years I attended the Bob Griese-Karl Noonan sports summer camp in Boca Raton, which was from 1971-'74.)

Of course, the most important question, actually, I suppose, more of a two-parter, is 

a.) what sort of distribution will these authors get in the U.S. to build on their existing popularity and the positive media buzz, and,

b.) how clever will their agents be at seizing (creating) the sorts of clever promotional opportunities they need to cut thru the clutter and build upon this buzz to show open-minded American book consumers that the Swedish crime novel genre is more than one very curious and talented man named Stieg Larsson.

Or at least so it seems to me from my perch here in South Florida, far from Södermalm 

Hotel J, Nacka Strand, Stockholm, Sweden

Hotel J, Nacka Strand, Stockholm, Sweden.

I'd absolutely love to be able to stay here for a day or two while I'm visiting this summer, but it might not work out with my schedule. 
Update: It didn't and I went on my trip in January of 2013, when being near water didn't seem so important as it would have in the summer!
But I did walk by and around it and it's really something

Eat, drink, shop, stay and stare—a tip sheet to the stunning little big city of Stockholm  

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/04/more-than-mystery.html

(FYI: Since it isn't mentioned for some reason, the main photo for the article is one taken of ice floes in the water looking towards Gamla Stan and the Palace.)

The beautiful photo essays are divided into four categories:

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/04/more-than-mystery-restaurants.html

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/04/more-than-mystery-bars.html

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/04/more-than-mystery-hotels.html

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/04/more-than-mystery-retail.html

Mysterious Sweden
Turns out LISBETH SALANDER is far from alone when it comes to compelling plots and intriguing characters in Nordic crime fiction  
By John-Henri Holmberg

Authors mentioned include  Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Leif G.W. Persson, Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström, Lars Kepler, Liza Marklund, Åsa Larsson, Håkan Nesser, Kristina Ohlsson, John-Henri Holmberg, Katarina Wennstam and Karin Alfredsson

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/04/mysterious-sweden.html

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/wallander/mankell.html

Sweden's Official YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Sweden

Jonna Dagliden, Stockholm, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Leif G.W. Persson, Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström, Lars Kepler, Liza Marklund, Åsa Larsson, Håkan Nesser, Kristina Ohlsson, John-Henri Holmberg, Sweden, Los Angeles Times,