Wallander/YMMV

Crowning Moment of Awesome: In Firewall Wallander saves the world from a massive and destructive cyber-terrorism attack.
- In The Dogs of Riga he illegally sneaks into Latvia and eventually brings down an extremely corrupt police officer who had murdered a colleague with not much else than the help of the woman he loves, and some of her friends.
- In The Revenge, the first film in season two of the Henriksson Wallander films, Wallander very coolly rescues a government minister who was handcuffed to the murderer, taking her place instead.
Harsher in Hindsight: Wallander's daughter, Linda, is described as having survived two suicide attempts as a teenager. In Real Life Johanna Sällström who played Linda in the first season of the Henriksson Wallander films committed suicide in 2007. Mankell was so upset that he shelved plans for a trilogy of books about Linda. This is also why she doesn't appear in the second season, as he didn't want to replace her with another actress.
- What makes it worse is that in the final episode she appeared in Linda's colleague and erstwhile boyfriend Stefan commits suicide.
Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: The television series, both Swedish and English, feature this on occasion. Most recently, 'The Man Who Smiled', if you're watching along Stateside, features Rupert Graves as Harderberg.
The Woobie: Wallander, definitely. See the Defective Detective example. The Branagh version takes this aspect Beyond the Impossible - even Branagh has said he wants to buy the guy a beer and tell him everything will be okay.
- In the Henriksson films, Pontus would probably qualify for this. He gets shot, beaten up, takes flack from his father for becoming a policeman instead of a lawyer, frequently gets chewed out by Wallander and does it all with a look of bemusement on his face.