On Tuesday evening I discovered that the BBC has been showing the original Wallender series with subtitles which Kenneth Branagh created several important episodes last year and which was to have continues with further series over coming years.
The books upon which the series is faithfully based have a world wide following and people take holidays to visits some of the key places mentioned in or near the Swedish coastal town in which they are set. Branagh won considerable praise for his work in the first series of British recreations shot in Sweden and I did see one of the original programmes at the time.
It is unfortunate that I missed the start of the Channel Four showing because the BBC appears to showing the originals series from the first programme and I was only able to view episodes 4 and 5 on the i player. While the first programme, The African was excellent and made me want to see more, The Overdose was a brilliant, if at times harrowing account that without in depth scrutiny it is often those entrusted by the community with power over young people who are the greatest threat to them.
In the programme Wallander and his team are called in to investigate the disappearance of a father who appears to have left his son alone in a car at a bus stop. The team find out that the mother is in a psychiatric establishment unable to communicate, self destructive and hostile to help following the suicide of her teenage daughter. Wallander’s daughter also had a history of self destructive behaviour and psychiatric/counselling help which was very important to her. She now works with her father as a police detective and by fictional coincidence is giving advice to school teenagers about the risks to them from the use of drug substances. The talks have been arranged by the school counsellor and during a talk a girl collapses from having taken an overdose and it later appears she had been earning significant sums of money for sex organised by a local small time drug pedlar, or so it begins to appear. When she and her father discover that the daughter of the missing father also attended the same school they begin to consider the wider implications. A third girl, new to the school and having problems of relationships becomes the target of what we the viewers come to appreciate as an organised gang who drug, take obscene photos and then blackmail the girl into have sex, providing with drugs to get her through the experience. At first the gang appears to consist of the young man peddling drugs to school children and another man who drives a blue van in which the sex assaults take place at isolated spots and involving a number of older men who use the girl of the moment on a regular basis.
The only questioning of the reality, true to life aspects of this episode occurred when the new girl target accepts a lift home from the ring organiser instead of waiting for her father, a lorry driver to collect her. He has given her a mobile phone for her 14th birthday and it is surprising that on this day of days she accepts the lift, and then agrees to drink a substance, told it is vitamin C, which drugs her enabling her to be photographed. When she recovers she is told she has to go with men or the pictures of her will be circulated on the internet. She grabs the laptop and jumps out of the vehicle to be knocked down by a passing vehicle. Fortunately she survives and the police are already on the trail of the gang which leads to discovery of the remain of missing parent.
Wallander’s daughter already has come to have suspicions about a school master who appears a disciplinarian always finding fault with the girl who has taken the overdose and then the new girl. There is also the link that all three girls, the original suicide, the near suicide and the new girl are under the supervision of the school counsellor. Towards the end of the film, Wallander’s daughter discovers the attempted suicide girl is not in her hospital room and finds that the counsellor had entered the hospital wearing a white coat and has taken the girl onto the roof and is talking her into jumping. Again there is a query about the ability of people to find access to the roofs of buildings with which they were not previously familiar and the amazing coincidental great timing of her arrival to discover that the girl is missing.
Not withstanding these obvious dramatic creations upon real life, the episode has several fundamental truths. The obvious first one is the general vulnerability of school age teenage girls left unsupervised, especially if they have difficult home situations or are having problems with their personal appearance and body, and, or relationships with their peer group.
This was brought home to me in spectacular fashion on my way home from Newcastle yesterday evening. After the struggle with my case travelling across London and then the homeward trek up the hill on return from the capital, I decide to investigate the present cost of cases, especially the those with retractable handles.
While in Newcastle I had taken the Metro to Haymarket station to view the developments above and below ground and certainly it is a vast improvement although I do not understand why it has taken a couple of years and is several months still from completion. I then crossed over the main road to look at the new University of Newcastle Building which looks completed had has taken up the University Car park which was used by those visiting the Playhouse Theatre. The Playhouse building cannot be seen now from the roadway street entrance to the University Union, and this and other university buildings cannot be reached as before because the approach is being remodelled. I assume it is possible to reach the Theatre from a passageway closer to the Haymarket Station. From the traffic lights and pedestrian crossing there is a passage way used by supporters to Newcastle Football club on match days. This was adjacent to University buildings. I cannot remember what was on the roadside from here to buildings before the entrance to the Playhouse Theatre and Union Buildings. This is now partly a new building site as the University brings onto the main road not one but two major buildings developments. It is obviously threatened by the dramatic growth of Northumberland University with its iconic new building and pedestrian bridge built on the former Warner cinema site. The pub next to the university centred bookshop is offering main meals for £3 from lunchtime until eight in the evenings and where I have visited in the past to view live sport
Still this is all a digression from the luggage search and what happened on the return journey. I had taken the trip because I could not find any seller of luggage in South Shields, except Argos. The problem with Argos that you cannot see items beforehand especially their weight and suitability for the required task. My first call was to John Lewis and this was a shock because the cheapest and smallest of the cases cost £80 going upwards to £140 for the larger items. This was twice what I had expected or wanted to pay. Perhaps it was to be Argos after all. Where Argos has been in the shopping centre is part of developments to improve the central shopping facility in Newcastle, given that the largest indoor and out door retail park in Europe is located on the outskirts of Gateshead, a couple of miles up river. I decided to look in at Fenwicks, Newcastle’s premier departmental store where I expected the price range to be same. What a master stroke because Fenwicks was having a luggage sale with prices marked down by 50%. I was able to but the case I had seen at John Lewis for £40. Back home I checked out the Argos catalogue and I could have got a luggage set for the same price, such is life. Later when I visited Asda they also did a three piece luggage set but not of the quality of my purchase/
Now to what happened on the Metro train and the link with the Wallander episode.
he Metro train was crowded out but I was given a seat by the door as the journey commenced and which provide a view down the carriage. At Pelaw, I think, the station between Heworth and Hebburn a crowd of boisterous young people got on the train. There were five boys within the age range fourteen to sixteen, reasonably dressed in casual clothes which did not draw special attention to themselves whereas the four girls were extraordinary, heavily made up and wearing brief hot pants or the shortest of skirts They appeared to be very excited with everyone talking at the same time and possible drunk. They were passing bottles around which had the appearance of soft drinks but the behaviour suggested otherwise.
I do not know what happened but it looked as if a middle age couple spoke to the driver, on leaving the carriage at Hebburn about the behaviour of the young people and one young man, a boy, wearing glasses a looking academic, pounced onto the platform and hurled foul mouth abuse towards the couple who had left the train. It is the worst such outburst I have heard for many a day. My impression is that the driver invited the young people to leave the train or he would arrange for them to be taken off. The train moved on but later another group of young people similarly dressed got on the train and got off at South Shields.
I used to see a large gathering of school age young people attend an early evening disco at a nightclub venue on my way to visiting my mother when she was in residential care. The venue which is outside the area where the establishments are now located has been closed for a couple of years and the building is up or sale.
Apart from the size of the queue the young did not attract attention because of the appearance or behaviour. The event seemed to be a good idea although it was obviously a way of getting the youngsters into wanting to attend the adult evening events in the future. One wondered about the scrutiny to ensure that alcohol and drugs were not brought in.
I take the first compartment of the metro trains because it enables me to get out close to the access past the former railway station which leads to my part of the Law Top and which cuts out the first part of the hill. I come out adjacent to Station Taxis where I noticed a police car and then across the street next to Wetherspoon’s pub there were more of young people in terms of dress who had been encountered on the Metro train. They were making their way to Dusk at night club set back next to Wetherspoon’s and a former Working Men’s club. There was also a mobile police CCTV unit vehicle. The clothing of some of those was fluorescent which seems sensible in a darkened dark club atmosphere. I was also surprise at the number of security men who were outside vetting everyone as they entered. This was Ibiza South Shield’s style and using the language of my youth it was way out man, really way out!
The first Wallander episode viewed is called the African and follows the discovering of a body on a goods train which is sent back from somewhere in Europe when discovered and the investigators are able to determine the time of death as before departure of the train. Wallander is on leave checking out a weekend holiday stay and the owners of the property are found to be an old school friend who has become a leading politician with the prospect of a government position if the his party win the coming General Election. This tale is comparatively simple although the solving of the mystery interesting, The politician used to work in Africa where it emerges he unintentionally kills a black mother with whom he was having a relationship. The son and a friend come to Sweden where they blackmail the politician. However the two black men fall out over the money with both shooting and wounding each other, one fatally. The twist in the tale is that the surviving African man has established a relationship with a wife and mother who harbours him at the family holiday home where she moves to after being ejected from the marital home by her husband. The situation is resolved and the children reunited with their father, but the series always draw attention that there are s victims who pay a high price for the behaviour of others.
As a secondary story is the relationship between Wallander and his boss and their relationships, he with his boss and she with a work colleague. While daughter and work colleague share a home the relationship is more one of close friends than lovers with a future together. There are problems when the male colleague has other relationships however casual. Father is unhappy about their relationship because of the implications for their careers given the prevailing rules about such situations. However he has more to worry about as during his annual health check up following heart attack the possibility of prostate cancer arises with further investigations and a period of waiting for the results of the tests.
Father meets up with his daughter after she has been single handed sailing and she gives him a letter which she has carried around all day, and which unknown to her gives information that the tests have proved negative and he is clear. On reflection I think this story line takes place during the Overdose episode although aspects are included in both stories.
I did try and find out more about Dusk and the school age rave. Dusk is a comparatively new night club in South Shields of which has two floors providing different kinds of scenes and music and appears to be one that is surviving along with the twin clubs of Roxanne and Vogue and the 70’s and 80’s Glitter Ball. The Cayote has closed although appears to function as a bar. The clubs appear to only open at weekends for or two nights a week. There was no web site for Dusk although someone had a Myspace page, someone else photographs and various reviews. The Shields Gazette runs a competition offering a taxi, pre club drinks at a bar and then free entry and sparkling wine on arrival said to be worth £100. Reviews and comments from some young participants match the clothing and languages experience on the Metro train, only less comprehensible. The main complaints are about the music and rivalry between different clubs including the Hanger in Sunderland
This brings me back to the vulnerability of young people especially teenage girls and the main message from The Overdose. The greatest threat to the young women came from the School Councillor and a master because they were paedophiles who not only used the girls but were in a position of authority to identify victims to those who organised the ring. There is always need to ask Who guards the Guardians?
The books upon which the series is faithfully based have a world wide following and people take holidays to visits some of the key places mentioned in or near the Swedish coastal town in which they are set. Branagh won considerable praise for his work in the first series of British recreations shot in Sweden and I did see one of the original programmes at the time.
It is unfortunate that I missed the start of the Channel Four showing because the BBC appears to showing the originals series from the first programme and I was only able to view episodes 4 and 5 on the i player. While the first programme, The African was excellent and made me want to see more, The Overdose was a brilliant, if at times harrowing account that without in depth scrutiny it is often those entrusted by the community with power over young people who are the greatest threat to them.
In the programme Wallander and his team are called in to investigate the disappearance of a father who appears to have left his son alone in a car at a bus stop. The team find out that the mother is in a psychiatric establishment unable to communicate, self destructive and hostile to help following the suicide of her teenage daughter. Wallander’s daughter also had a history of self destructive behaviour and psychiatric/counselling help which was very important to her. She now works with her father as a police detective and by fictional coincidence is giving advice to school teenagers about the risks to them from the use of drug substances. The talks have been arranged by the school counsellor and during a talk a girl collapses from having taken an overdose and it later appears she had been earning significant sums of money for sex organised by a local small time drug pedlar, or so it begins to appear. When she and her father discover that the daughter of the missing father also attended the same school they begin to consider the wider implications. A third girl, new to the school and having problems of relationships becomes the target of what we the viewers come to appreciate as an organised gang who drug, take obscene photos and then blackmail the girl into have sex, providing with drugs to get her through the experience. At first the gang appears to consist of the young man peddling drugs to school children and another man who drives a blue van in which the sex assaults take place at isolated spots and involving a number of older men who use the girl of the moment on a regular basis.
The only questioning of the reality, true to life aspects of this episode occurred when the new girl target accepts a lift home from the ring organiser instead of waiting for her father, a lorry driver to collect her. He has given her a mobile phone for her 14th birthday and it is surprising that on this day of days she accepts the lift, and then agrees to drink a substance, told it is vitamin C, which drugs her enabling her to be photographed. When she recovers she is told she has to go with men or the pictures of her will be circulated on the internet. She grabs the laptop and jumps out of the vehicle to be knocked down by a passing vehicle. Fortunately she survives and the police are already on the trail of the gang which leads to discovery of the remain of missing parent.
Wallander’s daughter already has come to have suspicions about a school master who appears a disciplinarian always finding fault with the girl who has taken the overdose and then the new girl. There is also the link that all three girls, the original suicide, the near suicide and the new girl are under the supervision of the school counsellor. Towards the end of the film, Wallander’s daughter discovers the attempted suicide girl is not in her hospital room and finds that the counsellor had entered the hospital wearing a white coat and has taken the girl onto the roof and is talking her into jumping. Again there is a query about the ability of people to find access to the roofs of buildings with which they were not previously familiar and the amazing coincidental great timing of her arrival to discover that the girl is missing.
Not withstanding these obvious dramatic creations upon real life, the episode has several fundamental truths. The obvious first one is the general vulnerability of school age teenage girls left unsupervised, especially if they have difficult home situations or are having problems with their personal appearance and body, and, or relationships with their peer group.
This was brought home to me in spectacular fashion on my way home from Newcastle yesterday evening. After the struggle with my case travelling across London and then the homeward trek up the hill on return from the capital, I decide to investigate the present cost of cases, especially the those with retractable handles.
While in Newcastle I had taken the Metro to Haymarket station to view the developments above and below ground and certainly it is a vast improvement although I do not understand why it has taken a couple of years and is several months still from completion. I then crossed over the main road to look at the new University of Newcastle Building which looks completed had has taken up the University Car park which was used by those visiting the Playhouse Theatre. The Playhouse building cannot be seen now from the roadway street entrance to the University Union, and this and other university buildings cannot be reached as before because the approach is being remodelled. I assume it is possible to reach the Theatre from a passageway closer to the Haymarket Station. From the traffic lights and pedestrian crossing there is a passage way used by supporters to Newcastle Football club on match days. This was adjacent to University buildings. I cannot remember what was on the roadside from here to buildings before the entrance to the Playhouse Theatre and Union Buildings. This is now partly a new building site as the University brings onto the main road not one but two major buildings developments. It is obviously threatened by the dramatic growth of Northumberland University with its iconic new building and pedestrian bridge built on the former Warner cinema site. The pub next to the university centred bookshop is offering main meals for £3 from lunchtime until eight in the evenings and where I have visited in the past to view live sport
Still this is all a digression from the luggage search and what happened on the return journey. I had taken the trip because I could not find any seller of luggage in South Shields, except Argos. The problem with Argos that you cannot see items beforehand especially their weight and suitability for the required task. My first call was to John Lewis and this was a shock because the cheapest and smallest of the cases cost £80 going upwards to £140 for the larger items. This was twice what I had expected or wanted to pay. Perhaps it was to be Argos after all. Where Argos has been in the shopping centre is part of developments to improve the central shopping facility in Newcastle, given that the largest indoor and out door retail park in Europe is located on the outskirts of Gateshead, a couple of miles up river. I decided to look in at Fenwicks, Newcastle’s premier departmental store where I expected the price range to be same. What a master stroke because Fenwicks was having a luggage sale with prices marked down by 50%. I was able to but the case I had seen at John Lewis for £40. Back home I checked out the Argos catalogue and I could have got a luggage set for the same price, such is life. Later when I visited Asda they also did a three piece luggage set but not of the quality of my purchase/
Now to what happened on the Metro train and the link with the Wallander episode.
he Metro train was crowded out but I was given a seat by the door as the journey commenced and which provide a view down the carriage. At Pelaw, I think, the station between Heworth and Hebburn a crowd of boisterous young people got on the train. There were five boys within the age range fourteen to sixteen, reasonably dressed in casual clothes which did not draw special attention to themselves whereas the four girls were extraordinary, heavily made up and wearing brief hot pants or the shortest of skirts They appeared to be very excited with everyone talking at the same time and possible drunk. They were passing bottles around which had the appearance of soft drinks but the behaviour suggested otherwise.
I do not know what happened but it looked as if a middle age couple spoke to the driver, on leaving the carriage at Hebburn about the behaviour of the young people and one young man, a boy, wearing glasses a looking academic, pounced onto the platform and hurled foul mouth abuse towards the couple who had left the train. It is the worst such outburst I have heard for many a day. My impression is that the driver invited the young people to leave the train or he would arrange for them to be taken off. The train moved on but later another group of young people similarly dressed got on the train and got off at South Shields.
I used to see a large gathering of school age young people attend an early evening disco at a nightclub venue on my way to visiting my mother when she was in residential care. The venue which is outside the area where the establishments are now located has been closed for a couple of years and the building is up or sale.
Apart from the size of the queue the young did not attract attention because of the appearance or behaviour. The event seemed to be a good idea although it was obviously a way of getting the youngsters into wanting to attend the adult evening events in the future. One wondered about the scrutiny to ensure that alcohol and drugs were not brought in.
I take the first compartment of the metro trains because it enables me to get out close to the access past the former railway station which leads to my part of the Law Top and which cuts out the first part of the hill. I come out adjacent to Station Taxis where I noticed a police car and then across the street next to Wetherspoon’s pub there were more of young people in terms of dress who had been encountered on the Metro train. They were making their way to Dusk at night club set back next to Wetherspoon’s and a former Working Men’s club. There was also a mobile police CCTV unit vehicle. The clothing of some of those was fluorescent which seems sensible in a darkened dark club atmosphere. I was also surprise at the number of security men who were outside vetting everyone as they entered. This was Ibiza South Shield’s style and using the language of my youth it was way out man, really way out!
The first Wallander episode viewed is called the African and follows the discovering of a body on a goods train which is sent back from somewhere in Europe when discovered and the investigators are able to determine the time of death as before departure of the train. Wallander is on leave checking out a weekend holiday stay and the owners of the property are found to be an old school friend who has become a leading politician with the prospect of a government position if the his party win the coming General Election. This tale is comparatively simple although the solving of the mystery interesting, The politician used to work in Africa where it emerges he unintentionally kills a black mother with whom he was having a relationship. The son and a friend come to Sweden where they blackmail the politician. However the two black men fall out over the money with both shooting and wounding each other, one fatally. The twist in the tale is that the surviving African man has established a relationship with a wife and mother who harbours him at the family holiday home where she moves to after being ejected from the marital home by her husband. The situation is resolved and the children reunited with their father, but the series always draw attention that there are s victims who pay a high price for the behaviour of others.
As a secondary story is the relationship between Wallander and his boss and their relationships, he with his boss and she with a work colleague. While daughter and work colleague share a home the relationship is more one of close friends than lovers with a future together. There are problems when the male colleague has other relationships however casual. Father is unhappy about their relationship because of the implications for their careers given the prevailing rules about such situations. However he has more to worry about as during his annual health check up following heart attack the possibility of prostate cancer arises with further investigations and a period of waiting for the results of the tests.
Father meets up with his daughter after she has been single handed sailing and she gives him a letter which she has carried around all day, and which unknown to her gives information that the tests have proved negative and he is clear. On reflection I think this story line takes place during the Overdose episode although aspects are included in both stories.
I did try and find out more about Dusk and the school age rave. Dusk is a comparatively new night club in South Shields of which has two floors providing different kinds of scenes and music and appears to be one that is surviving along with the twin clubs of Roxanne and Vogue and the 70’s and 80’s Glitter Ball. The Cayote has closed although appears to function as a bar. The clubs appear to only open at weekends for or two nights a week. There was no web site for Dusk although someone had a Myspace page, someone else photographs and various reviews. The Shields Gazette runs a competition offering a taxi, pre club drinks at a bar and then free entry and sparkling wine on arrival said to be worth £100. Reviews and comments from some young participants match the clothing and languages experience on the Metro train, only less comprehensible. The main complaints are about the music and rivalry between different clubs including the Hanger in Sunderland
This brings me back to the vulnerability of young people especially teenage girls and the main message from The Overdose. The greatest threat to the young women came from the School Councillor and a master because they were paedophiles who not only used the girls but were in a position of authority to identify victims to those who organised the ring. There is always need to ask Who guards the Guardians?
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