Wednesday, November 17, 2010

BBC4 does it again (Wallander & Montalbano)

One of this blog's regular readers has tipped me off about a letter in the Radio Times revealing that this Christmas will be something to look forward to at least for BBC4 viewers:
BBC4 will be showing four Wallander films starring Rolf Lassgård over the Christmas period: 'The Man Who Smiled', 'One Step Behind', 'Firewall' and 'The Pyramid'. Plus there will be an unspecified number of Montalbano episodes. The second series of Wallander with Krister Henriksson will be repeated next year
Joy, joy, joy...

7 comments:

Uriah Robinson said...

Yippeee!!!!

offmytrolley said...

At last, something decent on the box at Christmas!

kathy d. said...

Oh, drat. Good for you all, but does this mean those of us over here, across the Atlantic, won't be able to see these programs?

Bob Cornwell said...

Great news! and well-spotted. You may not be aware however that Rolf Lassgård was Mankell’s first choice for the role of Wallander. In what was Mankell’s first ever English-language interview, back in May 2001 (still available on the Tangled Web site), he told me:–

Three of your books have been adapted for the screen, I believe...
Three have been adapted, but all of them will be done. I can tell you that last Friday, the last scene of The Fifth Woman was shot. So there is still five to go. I picked the actor who plays Wallander [Rolf Lassgärd], he’s a famous actor in Sweden. And in my contract, if for any reason, he is unavailable, I have the right to cancel everything. I won’t accept anyone else.
Have you worked with this actor in the theatre?
Yes, It was quite funny. I spoke with the director of the first film and he said: now we have to think who will play this character. I said: give me a pen and some paper, and I wrote the name and I said: my Wallander is here. He did the same. Then we opened the papers and we had the same name!

The Swedish Wallander movies go back to 1995, with The Dogs of Riga. Lassgård may be familiar to British film-goers from Storm, Hans-Christian Schmidt’s powerful war crime movie which was given a limited release in the UK in 2009. He plays Kerry Fox’s lover, a diplomat.

Maxine Clarke said...

oh, thanks, Karen! Good news. I do hope Kathy and fellow inhabitants across the Atlantic will get to see these, too.

2DogWoman said...

And another Yippeee!!!
Any news at all about Rolf Lassgård is enough to make my day!
I didn't know he was Mankell's first choice, but it's obvious that it wasn't Kenneth Branagh.
Henricksson is very good, too, but there's just no one like Lassgård, perhaps the greatest living actor.

Unknown said...

Great news, but does anyone know if and when BBC4 are going to show Series 3 of Spiral?