Claim: Wallander was adapted from novels.

Wallander is a British television series adapted from the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell 's Kurt Wallander novels and starring Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous police inspector . It is the first time the Wallander novels have been adapted into an English-language production . Yellow Bird , a production company formed by Mankell , began negotiations with British companies to produce the adaptations in 2006 . In 2007 , Branagh met with Mankell to discuss playing the role . Contracts were signed and work began on the films , adapted from Sidetracked , Firewall and One Step Behind , in January 2008 . Emmy-award-winning director Philip Martin was hired as lead director . Martin worked with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to establish a visual style for the series .   The first three-episode series , produced by Yellow Bird , Left Bank Pictures and TKBC for BBC Scotland , was broadcast on BBC One from November to December 2008 . The second series was filmed from July to October 2009 and was broadcast in January 2010 . The third series was filmed in the summer of 2011 in Ystad , Scania , Sweden , and Riga , Latvia , and aired in July 2012 . The fourth and final series was shot from October 2014 to January 2015 and premiered on German TV , dubbed into German , in December 2015 . The final series aired in the original English on BBC One in May 2016 . Critics have written positively of the series , which has won a Broadcasting Press Guild Award -LRB- Best Actor for Branagh -RRB- and six British Academy Television Awards , including Best Drama Series .