CONFUSING SWEDISH WALLANDER
Episode 10 of the Swedish Wallander series, Lufslottet, "The Castle Ruins", was confusing in that the summary at Yellow Bird bore no resemblance to the episode shown.
The castle in question was a luxurious block of apartments by the sea, inhabited by smart attractive but empty headed women, going to LC [life coaching] classes, and having affairs with the extremely creepy husbands of their "friends".
The elderly and eccentric previous owner of the land lived in squalor in a hut and shared his dog's food despite having 20 million kroner from the sale.
The story begins when the old man withdraws his money from the bank in cash and is later found dead along with his dogs, all poisoned by botulinum. As Kurt, Stefan and Linda investigate the idea that there is equality in Swedish society is completely demolished, and we discover that there are just as many people living way beyond their means as in the Anglo-Saxon world.
The unshaven Stefan gets on well with the children in this episode in contrast to his worsening icy relationship with Linda. While poor Kurt Wallander again spends time calming the explosive Stefan but looks even lonelier when surrounded by the young women in this episode.
The motive and opportunity for the crime should have been investigated much earlier by the team, who instead went off on completely the wrong track, but that at least did make for a more interesting program. Three more episodes to go....
posted by Uriah Robinson at 9:14 AM
3 Comments:
I've caught up with this series now, having been doing a lot of ironing recently! This is a very good review of this episode, I think. These programmes have got increasingly clunky I think - about 3 episodes ago (the one where Anne Marie Britt left) we suddenly got Wallender as sex symbol with a diff girlfriend or hint of one each episode (in this one you review here, at least one of the empty-headed women is making eyes at Kurt, and someone calls him "handsome" (eh???!) ), and the Linda/Stephan dynamics lurch from subtle to overheated falling-out. Even so, quite enjoyable - but I do think the quality has gone down since the earlier episodes.
Although the voiceover to the credits said there would be an ep next week, there was not one in the Times TV listing for next Monday, so I hope that it does exist. Because they showed the last two eps (or one?) before the start of the series, I was wondering if they have now, in fact, reached the end?
It hasn't reached the end on the Yellow Bird site but it looks as if BBC4 have decided to stop the series at this point. Disappointing :o(
Actually Luftslottet translates to something like fantasies, wishes, or delusions. It appears that someone at Yellow Bird has messed up big time and that The Castle Ruins has not been put on DVD, it's title being given in error to Luftslottet.
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