Radio Times

Review by:

Patrick Mulkern

Sidetracked is one of the best Wallander novels. It begins with the searing image of a teenager torching herself in a billowing yellow rape field, right in front of a helpless Kurt. The BBC chose it for their first film with Kenneth Branagh in 2008, compressing the plot into 90 minutes. This 2001 Swedish adaptation, premiering on BBC4 and starring Rolf Lassgard, sprawls over two feature-length episodes but eschews the book’s sweltering midsummer setting. Here the girl expires in a plain cornfield at the fag-end of autumn.

For this is an unrelentingly bleak portrait of a broken society and becomes disturbing as a teenage boy daubs on war paint, psyching himself up for gruesome retribution on child abusers, using axes and acid, before scalping his victims. Grim but gripping stuff.

About this programme

1/2. The first part of a 2001 film adaptation of Henning Mankell's Wallander novel Sidetracked, starring Rolf Lassgard as the titular Ystad detective. Kurt sets out on the trail of a sadistic killer who targets successful elderly men and collects their scalps after slaughtering them with an axe. With Siw Erixon and Klas Gosta Olsson. In Swedish.

Cast and crew

Cast

Kurt Wallander

Rolf Lassgard

Ann-Britt Hoglund

Siw Erixon

Svedberg

Christer Fant

Nyberg

Klas Gosta Olsson

Martinsson

Lars Melin

Stefan

Henrik Persson

Crew

Director

Leif Magnusson

Writer

Henning Mankell

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