You wouldn’t think the story of a child murderer would lend itself to comedy, but this Austrian television production, shot on location in wintry Vienna, sprouts some dark humour.

It also has the cheerful banality of a TV police procedural. Do all police eat unhealthy food? An inspector played by Sarah Viktoria Frick wins sympathy for her persistence, and she never stops eating burgers and buns.

Overall it’s a grim reflection of our modern world, with the rise of a surveillance society and the shameful way headline-grabbing crimes get exploited for political ends. Here, a right-wing minister uses the murders to attack immigrants and push for greater “homeland security”. We also see the manufacturing of fake news, warring parents, the horrible things that children sometimes witness, etc., all of which distract the viewer from the dire, dramatic heart of the story.

The original film was creepy, I watched this late at night many years ago and it turned me against Peter Lorre forever.

This version is more watered down than souped up, and the only parts that really work are those that closely imitate the original mise-en-scene and screenplay written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. The engrossing opening scene, for example, shows the heart-breaking last hours of 8-year-old Elsie. When she comes home on a cold snowy evening without her red jacket, her annoyed mother sends her back to the playground to get it.

She will be one of several missing children, as the police launch a manhunt and the news media howl for justice.

After you’ve watched the series, you can scare yourself with the original

I didn’t know they made good TV shows in Poland. I didn’t know they made any TV shows at all. .

This dystopian thriller is set in an alternative 2003. Poland is subject to totalitarian rule ever since a terror attack twenty years earlier which led to the installing of a dictatorial regime. A young idealistic law student pairs up with a grizzled and disgraced inspector to solve a murder and uncover a plot that will threaten the core of the police state.

The Polish government spent the decades between 1983 and 2003 cracking down on any rebellion that could lead to another terrorist incident. But not every secret stays hidden, as the show suggests the truth about the bombings is as sinister as it is buried.

The investigation into a twisted conspiracy is led by two unlikely allies: Inspector Anatol Janów, an aging police inspector who derailed his career after asking too many questions, and Kajetan Skowron, a student whose parents perished in the bombings and who has spent most of his life as a ward and symbol of the state.

As their sleuthing progresses, rebellions foment in every corner of the repressive regime from the highest ranks of the military to a shadowy group of freedom fighters known as “The Light Brigade.”

Well worth watching.

Henning Mankell, novelist extraordinaire

I first found Henning Mankell through his crime fiction featuring the melancholy Swedish sleuth Kurt Wallander. That’s understandable, those novels have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. I was thrilled by the film adaptations and the TV series too.

The landscape ever present in the Wallander novels beguiled me, the long twilights shadowing the undisturbed forests, the extensive mires and swampy lands, the lakes and waterways, the dreamlike feeling of an eerie territory. Some part of me responded to this land of bitter wind, of ice and snow.

Wallander muddles along most days trying to make sense of modern Sweden, listening to opera during the dreadful winters, and frequently overcome by Scandinavian melancholy. His wife has left him, his daughter won’t speak to him, and he has an infuriating elderly father who paints the same landscape over and over, seven thousand times in all.

Wallander lives a less-than-desirable lifestyle, eats badly, and drinks his nights away in a lonely, neglected flat. Over the years he’s become increasingly disillusioned with his work and despairs of the racism growing in Sweden. Kurt is a complex, moody man with a sharp intellect and an intuitive grasp of the hidden motivations of others. His colleagues, although frustrated by his brusque manner, respect his judgement.

It’s the complexity of Wallander’s character that endear him to us. We understand his frustration in the over-stretched workplace, his disheartenment with the selfishness of the younger generation and we understand, also, his fears of growing old.

Everyone has their favourite Wallanders. I prefer the Wallander most like the one in Mankell’s books and that’s definitely Krister Henriksson.

All three actors are superb.

Rossgard

The originals were Swedish-language films produced between 1994 and 2006, with Rolf Lassgard. Happily, I watched Faceless Killers, The Dogs of Riga, Sidetracked, The Fifth Woman and The Man Who Smiled on late night television and managed to videotape most of them. Unhappily, I have yet to work out a way to move the videotapes onto disc.

Henriksson

Then came the series with Krister Henriksson.

The first season of thirteen films was produced for television in 2005 and 2006, with one taken directly from a novel and the remainder with new storylines suggested by Mankell. The second season of thirteen episodes was shown between 2009 and 2010.

Henriksson was definitely Wallander.

Branagh

Kenneth Branagh is excellent. Even after the shock of hearing the name, Wallander, anglicised and being startled at the very young ages of Kurt’s colleagues, I quickly learned to love these series too. The sense of Sweden is still there and the dark, weary detective is just as dark and weary. And just as pale and pudgy.

But Henriksson is still Wallander to me.

So I watched the pilot of Reign. After the first 10 minutes of anachronistic folly, I stopped laughing and became, instead, quite cross. Yes, I watched the pilot and the first episode but one can only take so much torture. I’ll have to give it an award for Worst Historical Drama Ever. Was it worse than Quo Vadis? It was.

It’s billed as an’historical fantasy romance’ TV series, that billing should have warned me.

Amazing fusion of clothing

No, this isn’t a nightgown, it’s a dress that Mary wears in public. And sometimes with her underwear on the outside.

Mind you, I’d love to wear this dress myself but I’m no longer 18 (or even 28) and it wouldn’t suit. Pity.

We must have attractive actors to portray historical characters but there’s certainly a big difference between the televised and the real French royal couple.

Poor boy, he died aged sixteen, a year after he married Mary.

Here’s Mary’s teenage ladies in waiting, all dolled up with shiny hair, shiny skin and shiny non-Renaissance costumes’

But it’s not just the strange hairstyles, cosmetics and strange language, more 21st than 16th century, that got under my skin, it was the outrageous behaviour of teenage Mary and her teenage ladies-in-waiting. In one scene, in front of visiting dignitaries, they danced around the royal ballroom together, wantonly shoeless.

Even more outrageous was the constant referring to Mary as Queen of Scotland!