"The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" on HBO
Sandiego.com
By Robert P. Laurence
Posted on Wed, Mar 25th, 2009
At least when Sam Spade was tracking down a missing person, he didn't have to worry that his report might end with the words "eaten by lion."
But private eye Precious Ramotswe has to list lions, not to mention hyenas and voodoo curses, among the many calamities that might befall a missing person.
Precious is the No. 1 detective at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which is No. 1, as she cheerfully admits, because it is the only ladies' detective agency in her landlocked Southern African nation of Botswana.
She's also the No. 1 character in "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," a delightfully sweet, funny and beautiful new seven-part HBO series based on the hugely popular novels by Scotland's Alexander McCall Smith. (Debuting on HBO at 8-10 p.m. Sunday, March 29. Repeating at 10 p.m., at 11:30 p.m. March 30, and several more times in the next three weeks.)
Sunday's pilot, which the BBC aired last year, was the final film directed by Oscar winner Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient") before his death a year ago. Among the executive producers was Sydney Pollack, who also died a year ago.
Filmed in the villages, hills and prairies of Botswana, the series stars Grammy-winning Philadelphia singer Jill Scott as the serenely cheerful and indefatigable Precious, a woman who gladly embraces her ample size but resolutely detests telephones because, after all, "People think they can just speak to you, willy nilly." She's got that right.
Smith, a former professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, is an astoundingly prolific author whose 60-odd volumes include not only scholarly tomes on the law and medicine but dozens of children's books and mysteries as well. He was born in what is now Zimbabwe and for a time taught law at the University of Botswana. He brings his knowledge of all those seemingly disparate subjects - African culture, medicine and the law - to his "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series, which now number nine books.
Not that Precious is a lawyer or a doctor. She's a woman of limited education who inherits 180 cattle upon the death of her doting father. But she knows she has a talent for seeing the significance of details that might escape other people, and she has ambition. And she's aware that she can win people over with her seemingly guileless charm. So she raises some capital by auctioning off the cattle, rents a small abandoned village post office and sets up shop.
She has one employe, her secretary, the comically upright, unabashedly opinionated Grace (Anika Noni Rose). When a potential client arrives, asking Precious to find out if her husband has been wandering, Grace informs her loudly, "Most men are unfaithful! You don't need a detective to tell you that." As the woman tells her story, Grace plants herself just outside Precious' door and declares that the fellow is "a philanderer of the first water!"
In the space of Sunday's pilot, Precious resolves three or four mysteries, including the disappearance of a small boy, the wandering husband, a finger missing from a man's hand, a finger found inside a car, and what the dramatic Grace dubs "The Cast of the Dubious Daddy."
None of them turn out quite the way you might have expected, which of course is exactly what Smith had in mind.
About the author: Robert P. Laurence was television critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 21 years. He previously wrote about politics, jazz, rock 'n' roll and all manner of news. He graduated in journalism from San Francisco State University, and earned an M.A. in political science at San Jose State. He's lived in San Diego since 1971.
More by this author.
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