Leif G.W. Persson's crime novels about the appalling and awful Detective named Evert Bäckström are pretty good. And - given that while Swedes are great people who have done many great things, good funny comedy is one of the things they don't seem to be able to do - the books are also pretty damn humorous. Bäckström is the anti-Wallander. He is an overpromoted idiot with an exaggerated idea of his own competence, a bastard to work for, surrounded by coppers who are similarly mediocre or corrupt or inept or simply defective. Persson's novels are an antidote to the hypercompetent Scandi cops who are brilliant geniuses who get the job done. The Norwegian version, Harry Hole, is a troubled drunk haunted by demons who still manages to crack hard cases by sheer genius. Bäckström is just a drunken shit. I can't believe apart from a cameo role in a longer TV drama by the same author, Bäckström has not been televised yet. This character would be a hit. (OK, he's been Americanised. But the American version doesn''t cut it, somehow: transplanting the action and some of the characters to an American city with new scripts does not have the same flavour. It needs a version set in Sweden with the original characters).
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Leif G.W. Persson's crime novels about the appalling and awful Detective named Evert Bäckström are pretty good. And - given that while Swedes are great people who have done many great things, good funny comedy is one of the things they don't seem to be able to do - the books are also pretty damn humorous. Bäckström is the anti-Wallander. He is an overpromoted idiot with an exaggerated idea of his own competence, a bastard to work for, surrounded by coppers who are similarly mediocre or corrupt or inept or simply defective. Persson's novels are an antidote to the hypercompetent Scandi cops who are brilliant geniuses who get the job done. The Norwegian version, Harry Hole, is a troubled drunk haunted by demons who still manages to crack hard cases by sheer genius. Bäckström is just a drunken shit. I can't believe apart from a cameo role in a longer TV drama by the same author, Bäckström has not been televised yet. This character would be a hit. (OK, he's been Americanised. But the American version doesn''t cut it, somehow: transplanting the action and some of the characters to an American city with new scripts does not have the same flavour. It needs a version set in Sweden with the original characters).