Kurt Wallander might look like your typical overworked police officer. But for actor Kenneth Branagh, be coming that character involved a thorough study of how to appear appropriately disheveled and exhausted.

"I did a whole sleep graph for Wal lander . . . and he rarely has wo hours at a time," Branagh said. "He's always waking up in the middle of the night in the grip of a case. He is utterly preoccupied to the detriment, obviously, of his personal life."

Branagh plays the Swedish detective in three new TV mysteries on PBS, and he said he developed the persona based on his impressions of several Wallander novels by Henning Mankell that he had first read for fun.

Viewers will be able to chart the course of Wallander's stress over the three 90-minute episodes airing as part of Masterpiece Mystery!

Branagh offered a little more analysis of Wallander:

Q: What kind of pressure did you feel in playing a character both you and other readers felt so attached to?

A: I knew that there (were) the imaginations of the many readers of the books that would have their own Wallander. . . . So I did feel a keen sense of responsibility, but I suppose I decided - and Henning Mankell encouraged this - to follow my own instincts.

Q: What do you like about Wallander?

A: There's a sort of deepseated ordinariness about him. He's not heroic. He doesn't have, like many fictional police officers and some real ones perhaps, any particular kind of front or personality that he puts on to do his job. He cannot help but be himself, and himself is a very flawed individual.

Q: Why does he take all of his cases so personally?

A: He's very aware of the fragility and the preciousness of life. He continues to be, in a way that of course isn't very helpful to him as a human being, to be astonished by the capacity in other human beings to perform acts of violence or acts of cruelty.

Q: What can make him happy?

A: What I think is going to be interesting to see ...-and what's very touching about him, I think - is that he does try to do something about his isolation. He does try to do something about his dysfunction.

Q: What role does the Swedish scenery play?

A: I had a strong sense that people were more introspective and more reflective in that part of the world. Most of them live on the coast.

If you go inland, you can drive for miles and miles and miles without seeing anyone and barely without seeing a building. I think that that has an impact on people.