YMMV / Wallander

• Alternate Character Interpretation: These two from the Swedish series.
  • Kurt Wallander himself. Although he's generally likeable, some people may find themselves disliking him due to his rather smug demeanor. There's also the fact that in the beginning of season 2, he is a misogynist who sees the trainee Isabelle as less capable than other officers simply because she's female. It is said to be because during Kurt's prime, women were stereotypically not associated with jobs like law enforcement, but does it truly justify it? And to add on this, he constantly looks down on the trainees and whenever they make a single mistake he doesn't try reasoning with them, preferring to scold them. One of the biggest things however is Wallander's reaction at Stefan committing suicide in season 1. Although he eventually agrees that his death was sad and becomes teary when he realizes he could have helped Stefan, it becomes very obvious that his job has consumed him, considering he barely even reacts when he hears the news about Stefan's death, and declares that Stefan betrayed the police.
  • And much like Wallander, Stefan has this too. While it is pretty clear he's an Anti-Hero who ultimately means well, it could be argued that he slides into Anti-Villain territory in The Secret, largely due to how dark the episode is. Stefan decides that he'll execute or at the very least threaten anyone who is suspected to have killed the boy the episode is about, regardless if they are innocent or not. However, the majority seem to think that he is more of an Anti-Hero, but still, he's definitely no saint in the episode.
• Complete Monster: See here.

• Ensemble Dark Horse: The British Martinsson. It's Tom Hiddleston, after all.
• Evil Is Cool: Alfred Hardeberg, Lothar Kraftzcyk, Anders Lindström, etc.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Wallander has a noteworthy following in Great Britain, which is why the British adaptation known as the Branagh series even exists.
  • This is also likely one of the reasons the Netflix show Young Wallander was made in english.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Wallander's daughter, Linda, is described as having survived two suicide attempts as a teenager. In Real Life Johanna Sällström who played Linda in the first season of the Henriksson Wallander films committed suicide in 2007. Mankell was so upset that he shelved plans for a trilogy of books about Linda. This is also why she doesn't appear in the second season, as he didn't want to replace her with another actress.
  • What makes it worse is that in the final episode she appeared in Linda's colleague and erstwhile boyfriend Stefan commits suicide.
• Magnificent Bastard: Anders Lindström, the Big Bad of the Swedish film adaptation The Revenge is a corrupt military general who, after losing his beloved son while he was fatally sick and the doctors were too lazy to cure him, went on a killing spree to murder those who were involved in it. Posing the killings as racially motivated, Anders kills multiple controversial figures to turn the attention to Islamic terrorists and frame them for the killings, before adding even more proof of that by committing terrorist attacks and blowing up cars, manipulating the entire country of Sweden into believing the framing. At the end, when Anders manages to hold Wallander hostage, they talk with each other, until Anders genuinely starts respecting him and lets him get out of the car, before jumping into the sea and blowing himself up, with everyone there watching sadly as he accepts defeat.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • In Firewall Wallander saves the world from a massive and destructive cyber-terrorism attack.
  • In The Dogs of Riga he illegally sneaks into Latvia, breaks into the archives at police headquarters in Riga and steals a file that a murdered officer had compiled, so that the massive corruption in the Latvian police force can be exposed and the murderer can get his comeuppance. He does all this despite thinking of himself as a coward and having little help apart from a small group of people who were connected with the murdered policeman.
  • In The Revenge, the first film in season two of the Henriksson Wallander films, Wallander very coolly rescues a government minister who was handcuffed to the murderer, taking her place instead.
• Narm: Some of the Translation Convention. In Firewall for example there is a character named Sonja Hökberg. In Swedish, it would be pronounced Höök-berg, but it is instead pronounced as "Hookberg".
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: The television series, both Swedish and English, feature this on occasion. Most recently, 'The Man Who Smiled', if you're watching along Stateside, features Rupert Graves as Harderberg.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Tom Hiddleston played Magnus Martinsson in the first two British series before rocketing to international superstardom as Loki in Thor.
  • Rebecca Ferguson plays a role in Sidetracked as the sister of Stefan, Louise Fredman.
  • A very young Nicholas Hoult plays the Wise Beyond Their Years teenager Stefan Fredman, in the same episode as Ferguson.
• The Scrappy: Heinrich Böhle from The Pyramid, while a Complete Monster, is this mostly because of his actor does a poor job of portraying such a formidable villain, making it narmy rather than terrifying.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: All of Wallander's incarnations veer dangerously close to this, but the Kenneth Branagh version is frequently cited as the biggest offender. Throughout Wallander is utterly miserable and has few if any moments of genuine happiness, to the point where a viewer can simply grow bored of the fact that nothing ever goes his way.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A smaller example. The British version did get good reviews generally, but a criticism is the inevitable Translation Convention and how everyone is talking English, in Ystad. For people who watched the original series it may come across as awkward.
• The Woobie:
  • Wallander, definitely. See the Defective Detective example. The Branagh version takes this aspect up a notch- even Branagh has said he wants to buy the guy a beer and tell him everything will be okay. His career has taken over him so much that even in his 70's, he would rather commit suicide than end his career.
  • In the Henriksson films, Pontus would probably qualify for this. He gets shot, beaten up, takes flack from his father for becoming a policeman instead of a lawyer, frequently gets chewed out by Wallander and does it all with a look of bemusement on his face.
  • Sonja, the young criminal in Firewall. She was raped when she was younger, her mom is dead, she is in trouble with the law due to killing the same guy who raped her previously, she is doing terrible in school due to insecurities despite being a top student in previous classes (though only mentioned in the Swedish version), and last of all, she gets burned to her death and is used as a distraction for a cyber-attack.