Åsa Janson

It's evening, and she is standing happily at a work table in her kitchen, perhaps making a cake, while the radio finishes a song for young lovers. Then, the 7 o'clock news begins with a report on an arrest in Israel. As she proceeds through a couple of kitchen accidents - dropping a bowl, pulling a smoking pan from the oven, and waving the smoke out the window of her fourth-floor flat - she realizes that the newscaster is informing listeners of her cooking disasters.

The story of a lone father's relationship with his daughter, of the destructive power of alcohol, of a child's vulnerability, but also of love, betrayal and socialist politics in 1970s Sweden.

A young woman is found dead in Ystad. When the police begin the case, they are told that the woman came from Moldova and that she worked as a prostitute in Sweden. Kurt, who leads the case, decides to seek out the woman's family in Moldova. When he returns to Sweden, he is involved in a car accident and takes a leave of absence from work. Around the same time, Kurt finds where his forgetfulness comes from.

When a border guard with a sixth sense for identifying smugglers encounters the first person she cannot prove is guilty, she is forced to confront terrifying revelations about herself and humankind.

Wallander is a Swedish television series adapted from Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels and starring Krister Henriksson in the title role. The 1st series of 13 films was produced in 2005 and 2006, with one taken directly from a novel and the remainder with new storylines suggested by Mankell. The 2nd series of 13 films was shown between 2009 and 2010. The stories are set in Ystad near the southern tip of Sweden. The three films Before the Frost, Mastermind, and The Secret were premiered in cinemas, with the rest first released as direct-to-DVD movies. The first episode of the second series, Hämnden, was released in Swedish cinemas in January 2009; the rest of the series was made for television. The BBC aired all 26 episodes of the Swedish television versions on BBC Four. A third and final season, containing six 90 minute episodes, will air in 2013 with Charlotta Jonsson as Linda Wallander. The first episode, adapted from the novel The Troubled Man, was released in cinemas in January 2013.