The Dogs of Riga

Episode aired Sep 16, 2012
TV-PGTV-PG
1h 30m

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

854

YOUR RATING

Crime Drama Mystery

The discovery of two slain youths in a dinghy which washes into Ystad brings hard-drinking Latvian detective Karlis Liepa from Riga. He tells Wallander they were his informants in a drug-smu... Read allThe discovery of two slain youths in a dinghy which washes into Ystad brings hard-drinking Latvian detective Karlis Liepa from Riga. He tells Wallander they were his informants in a drug-smuggling ring after the dinghy, containing cocaine, is stolen. Liepa is murdered on his retu... Read allThe discovery of two slain youths in a dinghy which washes into Ystad brings hard-drinking Latvian detective Karlis Liepa from Riga. He tells Wallander they were his informants in a drug-smuggling ring after the dinghy, containing cocaine, is stolen. Liepa is murdered on his return home and Wallander travels to Riga to learn that the secretive detective did not show h... Read all

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

854

YOUR RATING

Director
- Esther May Campbell
Writers
- Peter Harness
- Henning Mankell(novel)
Stars

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Featured review

Weird mix of 90s story with 201x Riga

I read all of Mankell's Wallander books and "Dogs of Riga" was a pretty good one (although not his best), describing the state of Latvia and its connections to Sweden in the early 90s very well.

Now this film takes the book, presents basically the same story in 2011 (or 2012), and fails miserably. It seems that the author forgot that Latvia has gone through enormous changes in the last 20 years. These are very well captured in the pictures (Riga would have been a much more gray and gloomy place in 1992!) but the story is not at all believable any more now, after the Baltic states have been part of the EU for almost 10 years.

Additionally, the seasons kept changing wildly throughout the film (it starts with snowflakes in Sweden, then it is obviously summer in Riga, in between the fields in Sweden are green).

Finally, the only connection to the previous episode was Ann-Britt in hospital, Wallanders previous live-with woman was never even mentioned.

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