Young Wallander

Netflix | Release Date: September 3, 2020

4.4	USER SCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 8 Ratings

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bif7681Sep 5, 2020

By the second episode, I was already getting bored. Sorry but this is nowhere near the previous Wallander series. The actor portraying the young Wallander is such a bore that his co-actors looked very good.

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

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truerockSep 3, 2020

Henning Mankell’s is a Swedish novelist who has written a series of books about a detective named Kurt Wallander. This is a TV series produced by the Swedish entertainment production company Yellow Bird. The series is dialoged in English -Henning Mankell’s is a Swedish novelist who has written a series of books about a detective named Kurt Wallander. This is a TV series produced by the Swedish entertainment production company Yellow Bird. The series is dialoged in English - which surprised me - I was expecting Swedish. This video series is a prequel regarding Kurt Wallander when he was a young rookie Swedish police officer - hence the name of the series "Young Wallander".

The Wallander novels (which have sold tens of millions of copies) have been used as the basis for:
A television series on the Swedish TV4 network during 2005 to 2013.
A Swedish television film series produced by Sveriges Television during 2010 to 2015.
A British BBC television series during 2008 to 2016.
There are tens of millions of Wallander fans and I would imagine they will be interested in a Wallander prequel.

So, this is a somewhat awkward attempt at being an edgy, woke, young-adult story that is aimed at a young adult and teen age audience. If you have watched thousands of hours of Law and Order you will probably not be that impressed with Young Wallander. But, I'm cutting this series some slack and assuming it is produced for people who have not watched thousands of hours of Law and Order and/or other crime-law-enforcement drama.

I have watched the first episode of Young Wallander and liked it enough to plan to watch the remainder of the season 1 episodes. I will come back later and perhaps adjust my rating.

I will say that my initial impression is that Adam Pålsson does a very good job portraying Wallander. And, to me... the directing seems to be weak. I am interested to see if the technical parts of the production smooth out after a few more episodes. But, there are things like a really bad child actor in a couple of scenes that I found disturbing in a cringey kind of way.

Keep in mind, if you do not know what Brännvin is and are unfamiliar with Swedish real estate and politics, etc. - then, some of the writing is going to be over your head.

*************************************************************
So, I've completed watching the remaining episodes of the first season of Young Wallander and I've raised my rating from 6 to 7. I watched a little bit of Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman's 1964 film '491' to get into the mood of Swedish film. Adam Pålsson was a good choice to play the role of Wallander. The writing became more interesting. The overall production quality smoothed-out in the remaining episodes.

If you are a viewer who enjoys crime drama I think you'll enjoy Young Wallander.

Reflecting on this series, it has occurred to me that if you are not familiar with the character Kurt Wallander from the dozens of novels and films - you will not be able to fully appreciate Young Wallander. I guess there is not much you could do about that - except, it might help if you take a few minutes to read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wallander

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henning_Mankell

*************************************************************

The above review was written 2 years ago. I re-watched season-1 of Young Wallander in preparation for watching season-2 released this year, 2022.

I'm raising my review score from 7 to 8. I'm still impressed with the overall quality of the series - especially noting the quality of the acting for the minor roles. Even the walk-on parts are well cast.

Also, I noticed some cinematography and editing that I felt was of very high quality.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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