Funny - I thought the opposite.
My intial take on it was naturally the most superfluous - that the Swedish female cast were a great deal more absorbing than their British counterparts. I enjoyed the Swedish Wallander, and it was certainly gripping, but the plot seemed to become increasingly far-fetched until I resorted to silently mouthing 'oh puhleeze' while chewing my fingernails and gawping. Two blondes in nighties on a descending platform with nooses round their neck? Another blonde chained to a radiator in her underwear? It certainly got my attention, swiftly followed by 'puhleeze'.
Svensk Wallander seemed to have become accustomed to his inadequacies; Branagh's seems perpetually on the verge of tears, and sometimes well across it. I suppose I'm not as familiar with Branagh as an actor as many in the UK, but I thought he was excellent: grey, haggard and tormented. In fact the whole of the British version seemed more slick. I spent many years watching Swedish TV, and can honestly say it wasn't the fault of the actors they were so wooden; no, Swedes really aren't that demonstrative at the best of times. But even so, too many were caricatures. The plot was bizarre, with our psychokiller bugging the police station, turning up in disguise as a cleaner, breaking into Wallander's flat (repeatedly), breaking into Martinsson's place, abducting his daughter, squirting some blood around that he'd siphoned off another corpse, and when finding he had a spare hour, nipping down to the firing range to cunningly doctor the ammunition just before Linda turned up to prove she was a better cop than her dad, ensuring that as the only witness able to provide a description, she was blinded, rather than killed. (Too easy, y'see. Too nice.) Puhleeze.
British version is beautifully filmed - washed out, grey, brooding, introspective angles. Svensk version was pretty run-of-the-mill Eurocop style, with a bit of sexual tension between Linda (whose show it's become) and the dumb-looking studcop in leather coat. I love the effort the Brits have made, putting the chief on a real Swedish TV channel, the roadsigns, the continuity. But the incessant, inevitable anglicization is annoying. 'Wollander' when it should be 'Val-LAN-der'. Arne became Arnie. Nyberg became 'Nigh-berg' instead of Noobarg. And when some brave soul attempted 'Ystad' I said 'bless-you' out of sympathy. The Swedish one reminded me of a Euro cop show trying to live up to the excitement of CSI. The British version unfurled gently in monochrome with a restrained touch, slower, more cerebral, to my mind exactly how Wallander should be. And also, oddly, somehow more Swedish.