Light On Dark Water

Wallander (2)

I watched the second episode of season 3, The Dogs of Riga, a couple of nights ago. I think I liked the first one a little better. This one shared the atmosphere of the other, but is more gruesome and has more action and suspense–several people are tortured and murdered in a rather horrible way, and Wallander is in danger of the same. The torture is not shown, but its after-effects are, and just the idea is disturbing enough. Same grim atmosphere. The plot involves post-Soviet corruption in Latvia, though I don't recall any mention of dogs.

Beth is right: Kenneth Branagh has hardly any lips. I guess that had registered on me as a tight-lipped expression, but I guess it's permanent.

Maclin Horton
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29 responses to “Wallander (2)”

  1. Art Deco

    Dunno. I thought it was poorly written. The characterization was haphazard on two dimensions and the ultimate resolution arbitrary.

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  2. Mac

    “it” being Dogs of Riga, right, not the other one? Well, I wouldn’t make any big claims for either one. It occurred to me as I was watching Dogs that it had more of the feel of a novel crammed into 90 minutes than the other one did. But I didn’t find out till later that it is in fact based on a novel, while the first one is based on a short story.

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  3. Rob G

    I read The Dogs of Riga a couple years ago. The TV show did compress the novel rather drastically, although I can’t say the book was very memorable. So far I’m disappointed with Season 3 after having liked 1 & 2 a lot.
    The two British mystery series I’ve been watching off and on over the past few months are George Gently and The Last Detective. Both are quite good, the latter being a good bit lighter in tone than the former.
    The other Brit thing I watched is the “Red Riding” trilogy, loosely based on the Yorkshire Ripper killings. It’s very dark and gritty and hard to watch at some points because of the subject matter. But it’s extremely well done, with top notch acting.

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  4. Janet

    I’ve only seen one episode of The Last Detective and I really enjoyed it. I’ve been meaning to go back and watch some more, but I never remember when I’m looking for something.
    AMDG

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  5. Mac

    I’ve never even heard of George Gently & Last Detective. No doubt something I would like. I’m not so sure about Red Riding. Years ago I gave up on the generally well-done Prime Suspect series because of the disturbing nature of the crimes depicted.
    I’m thoroughly hooked on the Inspector Lewis series. I guess y’all know about it–Morse’s Sergeant Lewis, now an inspector himself, with an interesting introvert sort-of-intellectual sergeant Hathaway.
    Also, I meant to mention a few weeks ago: Endeavor, which as you no doubt know was Morse’s middle name. It involves Morse as a young cop. I liked it. I don’t know if there’s more than the one episode or not.

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  6. Rob G

    Yeah, if you had problems with that aspect of Prime Suspect you wouldn’t like Red Riding.
    I’ve been meaning to watch Endeavor but haven’t gotten to it yet. I liked the Lewis episodes I’ve seen.
    Morse is still my all-time fave, though.

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  7. Mac

    If I had to pick a single fave from this sort of thing, I think the Dalgliesh series would be a bit ahead of Morse. But they’re both really good.

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  8. Janet

    I like Inspector Alleyn.
    AMDG

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  9. Mac

    I don’t that one, either.

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  10. Janet

    That must mean you don’t know that one.
    They have been impossible to get for a long time, but I see that they just put them in my DVD queue. I have been waiting for them for a long time. Since around the time that Netflix decided to split their services. I don’t know if I would like them so well if I hadn’t read all the books, but I think I would.
    AMDG

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  11. Janet

    Wallander (2) makes me think I have two messages here.
    AMDG

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  12. Rob G

    Yeah the Alleyns are good too. I’d probably like the Dalgliesh’s more if I hadn’t read the books first. But they are good adaptations.

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  13. Mac

    Yes, that was supposed to be “I don’t KNOW that one.” “Wallander (2)” — too much time on Facebook, huh?
    I’m not actually that wild about what I’ve read of P.D. James’s work. Not that I disliked it or anything, but haven’t liked it as much as I expected.

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  14. Janet

    Well, more gmail. Inbox (1).
    AMDG

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  15. Mac

    Oh yeah. Don’t know why I thought of Fb first since I don’t spend that much time on it, not nearly as much as gmail.

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  16. Marianne

    I’ve watched the first two seasons of Wallander, most of the seasons of The Last Detective, and Lewis. All are very well done, but there always ends up being some bits of dialogue or even story lines that are just so conservatives-are-evil or anti-religion (mostly anti-Christianity) that I’m left disheartened. The Lewis character, in particular, has become so anti-religion that he’s painful to watch, but this is lessened somewhat by his sidekick sergeant, who, I think, is supposed to have studied theology at Oxford.

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  17. Marianne

    Oh, and Endeavour was terrific. They got the young Morse just right. Think I read somewhere that they’re making more of them because it was such a big hit.

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  18. Art Deco

    Perhaps nostalgia on my part, but Lewis, Wallender, and the deeply unpalatable revised Sherlock Holmes just do not cut it juxtaposed to Game, Set, Match, Dagleish, Prime Suspect, or Inspector Morse. Need better writers, for one thing.

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  19. Mac

    Interesting comments. No time to respond right now but maybe in a couple of hours.

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  20. Mac

    We’re keeping two grandchildren this weekend: one age 2, one infant. It’s pretty crazy.
    Replying to Marianne: that stuff is there in Lewis, but it hasn’t struck me as being that bad, just sort of what one expects these days. It hasn’t really interfered that much with my enjoyment of them. But there was one thing in Lewis that really jumped out at me: Lewis is counseling Hathaway about being alone too much, letting his work get to him, etc., and says “You need a partner.” Meaning, girlfriend or wife. That struck me as a preposterously politically correct way to have a policeman talk. I don’t know, maybe enlightened British cops would say that. Either way, it’s an indication of just how strong and ambitious the dictatorship of relativism is.

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  21. Mac

    And replying to Art: I haven’t really thought about any sort of absolute difference in quality between the older and newer series. I would have to watch, say, a Morse and a Lewis back-to-back to venture an opinion on that. However, I do prefer the older ones, too. And I wonder if the difference is at least partly a reflection of a decline in the culture. There’s just a sense of…I don’t know, “sleaze” is too strong a word, but in general the whole milieu depicted, and the people in it, seem more often distasteful to me than in the old shows. The Oxford students in Lewis, for instance, are mostly a cold-hearted and very unappealing bunch. At least that’s the impression I’m left with–I can’t remember enough specifics to give examples. Not that this necessarily means the real Oxfordians are worse, but perhaps the writers are more inclined to see things that way.

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  22. Art Deco

    I would not say it is anything about the culture. Just a sense of plausible narrative will do. It often seems in Lewis as if the writers were attempting and then abandoning options for developments in the narrative and then just had to finish the bloody thing and come up with a contrived ending. The last is Wallander‘s problem as well.
    I cannot help wonder if there is in British television production some sort of life-cycle that has this manifestation. The end of Dr. Who in 1989 was a mercy-killing.
    Helen Mirren said that all of those involved in Prime Suspect were particular about attempting to reproduce the atmosphere of a British police precinct. She said this was a self-conscious counterpoint to Inspector Morse. Morse ca. 1992 is still engaging and entertaining.
    Given Theodore Dalrymple’s criticisms of the law, police, and courts in Britain, it would not surprise me in the least that someone in the apparat of a British police force might speak that way. It is, however, incongruent with the character, who is presented as someone with a vernacular sort of background, set of tastes, and personal texture (in contrast to Morse in the first series and Hathaway, Hobson, and Innocent in the second). The fictional Lewis was born in 1955 and would have had a set of speech patterns set long before the term ‘partner’ came in to vogue, so that would be a contrivance, because it was not a neologism. There were already words for the association he describes (although the writers have been presenting Hathaway as somewhat….AC/DC).

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  23. Mac

    About the fictional Lewis and his speech patterns etc.: yes, exactly. I think I laughed aloud when he said that. And then I was annoyed. I can imagine that an official requirement that “partner” be used compulsively, but not that someone like Lewis would say it in a situation like that. But then I have missed indications of AC/DCness on Hathaway’s part, though I remember him being interested in several girls, so maybe Lewis was being tactful.
    You must be a more serious fan of these things than I am. I had no idea when Lewis was born.
    I thought Prime Suspect was well produced and acted etc. I just didn’t want to subject myself to another series of particularly gruesome murders after the first series. Possibly I’ve become less sensitive since then.
    I agree that the Lewis plots tend to be implausible and the wrap-up unconvincing. What I’m not so sure about, because I haven’t seen them for so long, is whether I’d now think the same about Morse et.al.

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  24. Janet

    It was years before I could even watch Helen Mirren in anything after the first Prime Suspect because the whole thing was so soul sickening. I wonder if it would bother me less now. It bothers me that it might.
    AMDG

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  25. Mac

    Right.

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  26. Art Deco

    My error. The fictional Lewis was born in 1958 or 1959. There was an episode in which a high school flame was a character. In the course of the discussion he recalled that they had dated when he was in “6th form” she was in “5th form” and had attended a Barry Manilow concert in 1976. I believe 6th form students are generally between their 16th and 18th birthdays and that only about 20% of all students stayed in school for the 6th form ca. 1976. Lewis also visited his wife’s grave in one episode and her life span is listed as “1958-2003”.
    Note that Hathaway was an Anglican seminarian, that one of his best friends in adolescence was homosexual (and that episode’s treatment of Britain’s small minority of vigorous Christians was insufferable) and that of the three apparent women he has been shown with in quasi-romantic circumstances, one was with a man who had been surgically altered (though it is not quite clear from the plot that he understood that).

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  27. Mac

    1958 of course is still well within the dob range for someone not of the upper class/intelligentsia to refuse to fall into line with fashionable opinion.
    I remember that there was one episode that I thought was obnoxiously anti-Christian, as opposed to just occasionally snide. That may have been the same one that had a character who was a victim of “homophobia,” with attendant tsk-tsking from both Lewis and Hathaway. Maybe that’s the same one you’re referring to. It had Hathaway as pretty conversant at least with Christianity but taking the definitely progressive side.
    But the surgically altered man-!!–no memory of that at all. Maybe I missed that episode, or at least that information.

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  28. Art Deco

    This is the episode:
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1192517/

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  29. Mac

    Yep, that’s the one. I recall hoping that it would be reasonable in its treatment of Christianity and being pretty disappointed in it. I must have missed or have simply forgotten some of the stuff about Hathaway himself.

    Reply

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