Writing recently about Henning Mankel’s posthumously published book of essays, Quicksand, I mentioned interviewing him in the course of making a documentary about his crime fiction – Looking for Kurt Wallander – that was shown on BBC4 in 2008. Meeting Mankel aside, making the programme was a strange and slightly surreal experience, much of it involving me appearing suddenly in the middle of a field of ripening wheat and walking slowly towards the camera while trying desperately to remember what it had been agreed I was going to say.
I mention this because a short trailer for the programme has turned up on YouTube, complete with Spanish subtitles, and it doesn’t look too bad at all. There’s an extract from one of the interviews with Mankel, a nice sound track, a glimpse of Kenneth Branagh as Wallander, and me in a dishevelled summer suit. No walking through wheat fields, but a clip from a rather nice night time scene in a bar, the filming of which I remember fondly as it necessitated me downing a fresh shot of Glenmorangie for each take.
If you like this, the whole thing – an hour in length – is now available as a video download from the BBC Store. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fzbmt
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