IOL News, 12 October 2014
By Jan Cronje
**Thanks Emma, Ian

Cape Town - The new season of the hit British crime series 'Wallander', starring Sir Kenneth Branagh, will be filmed partly in Cape Town, the BBC announced this week.

In the fourth and final season of the series, adapted from the Wallander series of novels by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell, Branagh returns in his award-winning role as the brooding and introspective Inspector Kurt Wallander.

The BBC said that 'The White Lioness', the first of the new season’s three feature-length episodes, will be set and filmed on location in Cape Town.

The final two instalments of the series will be filmed in Sweden and Denmark.

“I always approach each series of 'Wallander' with anticipation and excitement, but this last series of films contain some of the greatest challenges the character has ever faced,” said Branagh.

'The White Lioness', which is Mankell’s third novel in his Wallander series, is set in South Africa in the early 1990s, at a time when the country was making the difficult transition from apartheid to democracy.

In the novel, a puzzling murder in Wallander’s home town of Ystad leads the Swedish detective to South Africa, where a famous politician is at risk of being assassinated.

The returning cast for the season includes Jeany Spark as Linda Wallander, Richard McCabe as Nyberg, Barnaby Kay as Lennart Mattson, and Ingeborga Dapkunaite as Baiba Liepa.

Production company Left Bank Pictures said the season would conclude the Wallander story arc. - Cape Argus