Wallander (TV Series) The Troubled Man (2015) User Reviews

Kurt's last case

[blanche-2 · 8/10 · 19 June 2016]

Wallander embarks on his last case, which hits close to home, just as he is diagnosed with the onset of dementia.

His daughter Linda's father-in-law has disappeared, and Linda asks her father to investigate along with Detective Yttenberg.

Kurt learns that Haken was a submariner thirty years earlier, and perhaps was keeping secrets from that time of his life, even from his wife. Haken also had a disabled daughter whom he visited secretly. Kurt also knows that Haken received a card on his birthday that disturbed him.

The detective fights his dementia as he attempts to find evidence from the 1980s in order to learn what Haken was involved in, and if it is connected somehow to his disappearance so that he can close his last case.

It's a sad episode as Kurt endures bouts of dementia and finally has to tell Linda the truth. That scene is very touching. It is disturbing to watch his moments of horrible confusion - I can't agree with one of the reviews here that it wasn't realistic. Even in the beginning of the disease, there are times of both confusion and clarity. I thought Branagh gave an excellent performance.

A moving ending to a fine series.

A Satisfying End to an Outstanding Series

[azmark1887 · 9/10 · 2 December 2017]

Kenneth Branagh and his supporting cast send off this wonderful series with a dense, troubling, and ultimately satisfying final two- part episode. "Wallander" has brought back the "masterpiece" in Masterpiece Theater.

For those who don't understand the moments of both lucidity and the moments of pure confusion in Branagh's portrayal of early outset Alzheimer's disease, you evidently haven't been around anyone who has suffered from this horrible disorder. I have had a close friend who suffered from the disease, and I found his portrayal to be painfully accurate.

I would have liked for this series to continue, but the death of Henning Mankell in 2015 evidently put an end to any hopes of future episodes.

Wallander's final case

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 5 June 2016]

As this, the final episode of the BBC's version of 'Wallander' opens it is confirmed that is indeed suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. He is advised that it is time to tell those close to him but he isn't quite ready. He is still suspended following the events of the previous episode but agrees to help when his daughter's father in law goes missing. He was an officer in the Swedish Navy and Kurt finds a recording suggesting that he thought there was a traitor in the Navy in the '80s when a Soviet submarine entered Swedish waters and was allowed to leave unchallenged… could his disappearance have anything to do with this? As time passes he has more and more moments of confusion and is finally forced to tell his daughter about his condition.

This episode was inevitably downbeat but provided a suitable and moving finale to the series. Kenneth Branagh is on top form as he depicts Kurt's affliction; at times it is painful to watch as he struggles with his condition. The case is inevitably secondary to this but it is still intriguing and has some good twists. It also serves to remind us that despite being a distinctly Western country it is also neutral so aiding the Americans was no less treasonous than helping the Soviets. Overall this was a really good final episode; I'll miss this series but am glad that it didn't drag on and go down hill.

O my God

[mufa1967 · 9/10 · 6 February 2020]

I just step over the edge of 50 and way the wallander present aging.... Hit me like train. There should be some kind of international award for this level of acting.

S4: First two episodes are so-so, but the final one lands closer

[bob the moo · 6 May 2017]

The first season of this show didn't really work for me, although the second and third engaged me more; the cases were better, the tone was better judged, and the grim atmosphere had something behind it in terms of narrative and character. The fourth season doesn't return to the superficial feeling of the first season, but there is something that doesn't quite work about it.

The cases do not seem to flow quite as well; in particular the first episode set in South Africa didn't really work in terms of being dramatically engaging, and the second episode seemed a bit messy in what it was doing. The third and final episode works much better because it has a lot of focus on Wallander himself, while also producing a case that is intriguing and has personal stakes. In this case I also liked the destructive nature of 'success' in the context of the investigation – this returned to the feeling of Wallander being a destructive force, spreading the grimness beyond himself. This element gives Branagh something to work with, and he rewards the episode for it. By contrast the other episodes he is more functional in his delivery, which is perhaps why they did not work as well for me.

Production values remain high, and everything has a great atmosphere, although I didn't think the South African episode worked with its location combined with the atmosphere they tried to deliver. The fourth season doesn't return to the weakness of the first season, but for me it was not as good as the middle two seasons – although the final episode does do a lot to help it go out in a good way.

The last hurrah.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 8/10 · 6 July 2022]

Wallander's health has deteriorated rapidly, but he still has one last case to solve, the disappearance of his daughter's father in law, Hakan von Enke.

It's taken me some time to warn to the show, but I really have grown to enjoy it, what a shame it's only four series long.

If I'm totally honest, I struggled with the early part of the episode, I couldn't quite get it, but as it progresses, it knits together very nicely, the story builds well, and concluded very, very strongly.

There is definitely an air of sadness about the whole thing, you cannot helped but be moved as you watch it. It's like we're taken back to the first series, where David Warner played the part of his dad so well.

It's quite a complex plot to follow, you have to concentrate, you also have to focus on where Kurt is at, Branagh puts in an exceptional performance here, you really do watch and feel the turmoil the great Detective is experiencing.

Beautifully produced, those opening scenes looked and sounded sublime, I could listen to that voice all day.

I loved two performances in particular, firstly that of Michael Byrne, and secondly the one by the late great Colette O'Neil, two veteran actors showing how it should be done.

8/10.

Final Episode in the Series Charting Wallander's Mental Deterioration

[l_rawjalaurence · 7/10 · 25 June 2016]

In this, the final episode of the British dramatization of the Swedish detective series of novels, Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) investigates another complicated case involving Hakan von Enke (Terrence Hardiman). Hakan is the father-in-law of Wallander's daughter Linda (Jeany Spark), so there is a distinctly personal aspect to this case.

The plot hinges on an incident taking place during the mid-Eighties when Hakan was involved in an incident where Soviet submarines encroached into Swedish waters. Nothing is quite what it seems: loyalties are brought into question, and Hakan's wife Louise (Ann Bell) is revealed to have been involved, despite outward appearances. In the end Wallander unravels the plot and confronts Hakan in a climactic sequence taking place in a deserted tunnel.

Of more interest in this episode, perhaps, is Wallander's gradually deteriorating state of mind. Although gamely pursuing his chosen career, it's clear that he is subject to moments where he quite literally does not know where he is or what he is doing. In his son-in-law Hans's (Harry Haddon-Paton's) office, for example, he loses the power to communicate, much to everyone's consternation. Later on he is discovered outside his house tearing off his shirt and jacket - reminiscent of King Lear on the heath - and is only prevented from causing further self-harm by his daughter's sympathetic ministrations. Branagh is very good at such moments, as he shows how Wallander's mind oscillates between extreme rationalism and wild imagining.

In the end the story is transformed into a race against time: will Wallander be able to solve the case before he finally succumbs to his illness? The ending is predictable, but engaging nonetheless; and is followed by a denouement in which Wallander empties his office desk and communicates with his deceased father (David Warner).

As with the other episodes in this short series, the action unfolds at a leisurely pace, with attention paid as much to the gray Swedish landscape as to the characters operating within it. "The Troubled Man" is a melancholy piece, but fascinating nonetheless.

The Troubled Man

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 11 July 2016]

The fourth series of Wallander has not been the best vintage. The opening episode set in South Africa was a bit off and too out of the ordinary. This series has a whole has never crackled and the stories were a little bit too slow to justify the longer running time. We have hardly seen Kurt's colleagues which were already decimated in the previous series.

Kenneth Branagh continues as the stoical Kurt for the final time. His actions affected by the early-onset of Alzheimer's he agrees to help when his daughter's father in law, Hakan goes missing.

The previous episode laid the foundations as the father in law told Kurt of an incident in the 1980s where he was an officer in the Swedish Navy and an incident with a Soviet submarine entering Swedish waters and the government did little about it which he felt was treasonous.

As the mystery unfolds there are conflicting loyalties. Kurt suspects his son in law, Hakan's wife is found dead, an old American friend of Hakan turns up and Kurt thinks Hakan himself might have staged his disappearance. All this in a background of Kurt struggling with his forgetfulness and moments of incoherence.

This episode ends with a coda of an old acquaintance of Kurt making an appearance which rounds the series off. Kurt in some ways ends up like his father at the end.

The Wallander books have finished and the final episode was dedicated to the author Henning Mankell who died 2015. I think this was the right time to stop as the show was on the verge of a decline.

Wallander Walks Away

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 26 May 2016]

Having seen the Swedish version of this final episode, I have to talk about a spark. As Kurt begins to succumb to Alzheimers, he becomes even more morose than he normally is. He finds himself trying to find his daughter's father-in-law, who has some connection to spying. As he does this, he becomes more and more confused. He at times is almost zombie-like. Granted, this insidious disease takes the soul out of a person, but early onset isn't presented with much reality. Wallander is awfully lucid most of the time but occasionally drops off the face of the earth. The performance is dull and that is the problem. One of our greatest actors interprets the role with a single dimension and gets by on pure luck. Branagh is so stoic as to appear catatonic. A bit of a disappointment to end this series.

It was author Mankell who was the troubled man.

[nungman36 · 5/10 · 20 May 2018]

Like Wikileaks founder Assange, the late Henning Mankell was profoundly hostile to all Western governments. The most Western being the US, he hated that country the most with the possible exception of Israel. It must have been very threatening to Mankell's belief system when the evidence unmistakably demonstrated that the ancient enemy Russia was as great a threat to Sweden today as in the time of Czar Peter the Great while America and the NATO alliance was his country's friend and protector. Against the backdrop of Kurt Wallander's early onset Alzheimer's Syndrome-- resulting, in the previous episode, in his suspension for leaving his pistol behind in a restaurant--this episode's plot is a pathetic fantasy about the Soviet submarines that violated Swedish territorial waters being actually American submarines and collusion between the Swedish armed forces and the C.I.A. to destabilize the government of then prime minister Olof Palme. Inasmuch as one of the submarines actually ran aground very near Sweden's main naval base (the celebrated "Whiskey on the Rocks" affair) with the captain and crew detained, the absurdity of the plot here is easy to see but hard to forgive.

The 'to be expected' demonization of...

[rusoviet · 1/10 · 11 February 2019]

...the (watch it and see) villian. The usual 'left rationaization' of how the CCCP and the USA aren't very different but always understand the real demon is always always the west....never ever the reds and here in the USA their counterparts 'demoncrats'...no it's always the GOP or 'Reagan' or 'Trump' the bogeyman is never the left never them ever them