Before the Frost

This is the story of a man with a messiah complex who decides to do God's work by destroying people who have committed "sins." (I won't get on my soap box about how destructive religion can be (we need only look at the world in general), but rather at the ease with which people can be talked into almost anything. Anna is a friend of Linda (Kurt's daughter) and she comes to see Kurt one night, full of guilt and uncertainty. Soon she disappears from sight. Now churches are set afire, people are dying at their own hands, but there is an overriding consistency to these things. Anna is carrying around a secret and seeks atonement. Unfortunately, the atonement only comes in death. Her mother and father are at the center of all this and, as usual, Kurt must wade through a lot of muck to find the truth.

Before the Frost was the only episode in this excellent series that I found a bit of a slog, after a baffling, macabre and unique opening we get pretty much eighty minutes of slow drama, then a fantastic, gripping last ten minutes. After the brilliance of The Dogs of Riga, this one seems slow and almost overly grim. Lindsay Duncan is excellent as Monica, a hugely talented actress, who lit up the screen alongside Branagh. Nice to finally see Kurt enjoy some quality time with his daughter, and engage with her.

The story is very clever and fascinating, I just find the delivery a little pedestrian, at times it felt overly sombre. Still very good, just a little flat in comparison to other episodes. As for his ringtone!! Who keeps the same one for 4 years?

After an uninspiring first season, the second season of this show produced a much more satisfying season of dark but engaging stories. This is continued into the third season, even though it opens with comparative positive situation for Wallander. The first mystery continues that tone, with a dead body in his own garden combined with an investigation into a girl killed at sea. The season continues with a brutal gang-related murder, and then the burnt corpse of a grandmother in the woods. As material for Sunday night viewing, it is consistently dark and grim in its tone and content.

In the first season, this felt very obvious and forced, but in the third as with the second, the delivery here makes it work. The stories are much more engaging; okay they have strong elements of convenience and coincidence in what they link together, but it did not stand out to me as being tenuous – even if on paper it was. There is a dogged persistence to the grim tone that is perfectly spread across all aspects. It doesn't feel like it is trying to paint it on, but rather that someone has steeped the episodes in something, getting it everywhere.

Branagh is very good at this – as he was in the second season. I believe his character, and I believe the damage done to him by the things he sees and does – again, it seems to be deep in his performance, not just something on the surface. He is wisely the focus of each episode, and his weary but determined performance gives the show a lot of drive and weight. Production values are very high; the locations look great, and everything by design has a tired cold grimness to it. The showy crimes do not feel like they are deliberately 'shocking' as they were in the first season, but rather they too are delivered with a sigh, even if they are extreme.

After not seeing the fuss at all in the first set of episodes, I'm very much on board now, and hoping the fourth season can continue the strengths here.