Following a tip from a listener to Radio 3′s Breakfast programme, I visited Peter Robinson’s website to find playlists of music listened to by Inspector Banks during several of the novels. Mostly compiled for Spotify by a Swedish fan, Johan, they’re helpful, eclectic and interesting.
Meanwhile there’s good news for fans of Swedish crime drama on TV – the favourite Saturday night BBC 4 slot will be filled by dramatisations of the novels of Arne Dahl: yes, the name was new to me as well, but he’s very popular in Scandinavia:
Five stories from the Intercrime series by Dahl – a pseudonym of Swedish novelist and literary critic
Jan Arnold – will be screened: The Blinded Man, Bad Blood, Many Waters, Europa Blues and To the Top of the Mountain. Each of the stories, which focus on a team of older detectives, will be shown as two feature-length episodes.
“Dahl continues in the tradition of The Killing and Wallander in portraying a social hinterland through the prism of the day-to-day of police investigation,” said Richard Klein, controller of BBC4.
This focus on society and character that goes beyond police procedure and whodunnit is what attracts UK audiences to Nordic Noir stories, according to Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, lecturer in Scandinavian Literature at University College London.
“From my experience with The Killing, it appears that viewers are at least as much interested in the Sarah Lund character as they are in the criminal investigation,” he said. “Nordic crime drama is at heart just a way of telling stories about everyday problems and challenges in an exhilarating way by the use of the crime plot.” (The Guardian)
The Bridge will be back, too, and some sunshine will be provided by further adventures of Inspector Montalbano.
