Young Wallander is based on Henning Mankell’s character from his novels, Kurt Wallander, but the series changed the time setting of the original story – here’s why. Crime series continue to be very popular, fiction or not, and Netflix has a wide selection of that genre. Its latest addition is the series Young Wallander, a new version of the Swedish detective who reached worldwide recognition thanks to the BBC’s Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh as a mature Kurt Wallander.
Young Wallander follows the young years of the title character, who’s working on his first case. After witnessing a horrible murder in his neighborhood, Wallander is promoted from policeman to detective and starts working on the case, even though he’s constantly trapped in an inner battle between what feels right and what must be done according to the law. While, Netflix's Young Wallander is based on the character created by Swedish author Henning Mankell, it made some changes to the source material and the Kenneth Branagh series, most notably its time setting.
It's a fairly common occurrence nowadays for reboot or spinoff series to take beloved, well-known characters and stories with proven track records and place them in a fresh context for contemporary audiences. Young Wallander is a perfect example of this phenomenon, as it certainly plays on nostalgia for the slightly older Wallander series by making connections to the Kenneth Branagh show. At the same time, however, Young Wallander allows itself to be its own story with its own version of the titular detective, and this is why some notable changes are made even if they're inconsistent with the original show. The fact that Netflix's Young Wallander changes the original time setting is the biggest such change.
Netflix's Young Wallander Changes The Original Time Setting
Netflix's Young Wallander changes the protagonist's timeline quite significantly, in fact. Kurt Wallander made his debut in 1991 in the novel Faceless Killers (Mördare utan ansikte), but the detective was born in 1957-1958. In the original story of Wallander's first case, included in the book The Pyramid (Pyramiden, published in 1999) and appropriately titled “Wallander’s First Case”, Wallander was 21. Thus, the story is set in 1969, in the middle of the Vietnam War. Even though Wallander’s stories are set in Sweden, the Vietnam War was still a topic of debate during his first case. However, Netflix's Young Wallander series changed the time setting completely, bringing Wallander and company to the present day, with all the technological advances of 2020 and all its social and political issues as well.
Although both the Netflix series, Young Wallander, and the Kenneth Branagh Wallander series focus on the same character, they are separate stories, which is why the Netflix series was free to do what it wanted with its protagonist and his story, including changing its time setting. Wallander also brought the detective to the present day at the time, but Young Wallander is an even newer and fresher take, following Kurt Wallander at the beginning of his career as a detective. Changing the time setting to 2020 allowed the writers to address more up-to-date themes and issues, such as racism and immigration. Of course, that’s not to say these issues weren’t present back in the 1960s-1970s, but the social and thus narrative approach to those issues have changed drastically in the past several decades.
What remained intact is Kenneth Branagh detective Kurt Wallander’s sensitivity towards those in need and his constant search for justice over what the law says should be done, which more often than not don’t match. Although taking viewers back to the late 1960s/early 1970s in Young Wallander would have been closer to the source material and could have been interesting to watch, it wouldn’t have had the same impact as setting it in the present day, which also helps viewers connect with it as these are themes they are familiar with. If Young Wallander season 2 ends up happening, this new time setting will open more doors when it comes to themes and social issues it can address.