San Francisco to Stockholm: Hooked on Wallander, Part 2

As mentioned before, I’m hooked on Wallander. Last weekend, I had the chance to finish watching the 2005/2006 series of films featuring Krister Henriksson, the late Johanna Sällström and Ola Rapace. Without giving away how this series of films ends, let’s just say the final film will leave you on the edge of your seat and proves to be sadly ironic, not to be missed! It's impossible not to get misty-eyed watching the finale of this series.

I plan on watching the 2009 Swedish Wallander series at some point but will need a little break knowing that Sällström (played Linda Wallander, amazing actress who committed suicide in real life at the age of 32, a few months after the first series ended, on the same day as being released from a treatment center, leaving behind a 5-year-old daughter) will no longer be a part of the films. Henning Mankell, author of the Wallander novels that inspired the series of films, did not have the heart to see a new Linda Wallander cast for the 2009 series. The fictional Linda, however, is featured in Mankells’s latest book, released in August.

Henriksson (who plays Kurt Wallander in the Swedish language series) talks about the 2009 films (not to be confused with the English Kenneth Branagh series) and missing Johanna in this Aftonbladet article (in Swedish).

Wikipedia says that in 2004, "Sällström experienced the Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand with her one year old daughter. They survived only because she held on to a tree with one hand and held her daughter with the other."

This post cannot end without a touching video tribute to the late Johanna Sällström....