LATEST: Mystery Solved
It is time for a little detective work of our own here at Material Witness as we seek to solve one of television's small but infuriating unsolved mysteries: what is Kurt Wallander's highly distinctive mobile ringtone?
In December 2007, I opened a review of the BBC's first series of Wallander with the following: "The ring tone of Kurt Wallander's mobile phone is shrill, insistent, impossible to ignore and just a little bit hypnotic. As such the phone represents the pull of the job on Wallander's life: it is always on; liable to go off at any second; it has an unbreakable hold on him."
If the the ringtone was interesting, I did not expect it to become one of the major sources of traffic to this site in the following months. But the close correlation of the words "ringtone" and "Wallander" did beging producing a very steady stream of traffic to Material Witness.
The airing of the first episode of the second series on Sunday has produced a similar effect. Wallander's ringtone is unchanged and the traffic from Google searching on the two words has resumed.
Last time around I made a half-arsed effort to find out what the ring tone was. But to no avail. Others have tried also, including this poster at Digital Spy, one at Booktalk & More (a good site I've not found before) and another at PBS in the US who admires its "defeated simplicity", which I think is a rather nice turn of phrase.
This time I am not to be foiled. The phone is clearly a SonyEricsson - compulsory equipment in Sweden, where you probably get the same death stares when carrying something else that you do when using something other than a Nokia in FInland - and an email to the press office should be able to reveal the secret of the tone. Watch this space.
In the meantime if anyone else can shed light on this topic, please leave a comment below.