Wallander (Branagh) Before the Frost

It is with the third episode Before the Frost that the extent to which the authors have created links between three selected books have is fully appreciated.

A woman disappears and is found to have been murdered. She had come across a man setting swans on fire, one of who aflame managed to fly off attracting the attention of someone who reported the incident. I remembered this incident from the original Swedish production but after this the story take a very different slant.

Kurt is visited at his isolated home in the countryside on the coast by a disturbed young woman who he knows as a friend of his daughter. She appears to want to tell him something but runs off. This leads Kurt to making contact with his daughter again. They find the friend is not at her flat and contact with her mother played by the excellent Lindsay Duncan reveals that these two have also become estranged and that girl has been away at university, but a visit there finds that she has dropped out and appears to have joined a religious cult. There are other odd deaths with the same component of someone dying as form of atonement. It emerges the missing girl’s father presumed dead returns and it here that is causing the death of individuals seeking atonement for past sins. Wallander becomes involved in a situation where the man has organised for his wife and daughter to commit suicide to atone for the fact that the with the help his wife his daughter had an abortion after being raped.

It is the girl who breaks out of the situation saving herself and her mother. The experience results in Wallander and his daughter confronting what happened between them and the daughter makes up for her father not being at the wedding letting him accompany her to the pregnancy ultra sound where he sees the picture of her child. The female assistant is also on the road to recovery and she tells Wallander he does not need to assuage his guilt by constant visiting. She has her husband and her daughter. The series therefore ends on a positive and optimistic note after the depressing gloom engendered by the first.