For 29 years, "Mystery" has been a British empire.

The killers and their victims are English; so are the crime-solvers.

The exceptions — Hercule Poirot is Belgian, Jules Maigret is French, Joe Leaphorn is Navajo, etc. — are rare. The British are considered very good at this murder-mystery business.

Now comes another exception: Three richly cinematic "Mystery" movies focus on Kurt Wallander, a Swedish police detective.

"They were shot entirely on location in Sweden — no Pinewood (Studios), no sets built," said Rebecca Eaton, the "Mystery" executive producer.

That was in Ystad, at the southern tip of Sweden; it's the home turf of novelist Henning Mankell.

"It is sort of a border town, Ystad," said Kenneth Bran-agh, the films' producer and star. "It's a port. It feels like a Wild West town."

Yes, Branagh. This Swed-ish detective — like Poirot and Maigret before him — is played by a British actor.

"Wallander" makes no illusions about that. Virtually every key actor in the films looks and sounds British; Sweden contributed the novelist (Mankell), the setting and the mood.

"It is atmospheric and poetic and different and odd and weird and magical and mysterious, in the way the books are," Branagh said.

That gloomy atmosphere seems to have settled into Wallander's soul. "If you're working in homicide," Branagh said, "it's going to cost you spiritually."

Wallander's marriage is ending and his sleep is lacking. He has no apparent interests, except for his work and his grown daughter; she nudges him into computer dating, with bad results. His small police force — Ystad is a city of about 17,000 — confronts horrific crimes, sometimes with national repercussions.

Most of this is done with silent emotion, by an actor who is accustomed to the wordy world of Shakespeare.

Branagh, originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at 23. He became an expert in that, later getting Oscar nominations as an actor ("Henry V"), director ("Henry V") and writer (adapting "Hamlet"). His non-Shakespeare roles have ranged from an anti-Hitler conspirator in "Val-kyrie" to an egotistical magician in the second Harry Potter movie and Emmy-nominated roles as Franklin Roosevelt ("Warm Springs) and a polar explorer ("Shackleton").

"He was making the British films that I wanted to be in," said co-star Tom Hiddleston. "He was the guy."

Hiddleston recalls being impressed by Branagh's 1993 "Much Ado About Nothing" at 13 and his 1996 "Hamlet" at 16. He was in Cambridge when he landed a small role in "Conspiracy," the 2001 HBO film that starred Branagh. "I was initially ... terrified ... It was a geat thrill to work with one of the best actors that we have in the U.K."

Branagh would win an Emmy for that role; lately, the two have been frequent colleagues. They did a radio play and, for four months, a London theater play; Hiddleston won the Olivier Award as best stage newcomer.

And they filmed these three mysteries back-to-back, with Hiddleston as Branagh's assistant. British guys captured the mood of another world.

"The weather is an important factor in Sweden," Branagh said. "The almost-pagan intensity with which they greet and celebrate mid-summer and the terror and fear of which they dread the coming and lengthy winter, I think, has an enormous impact on (the extremes) of their own lives."

Those extremes, of course, can lead to great murder mysteries.