THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY (HBO/WB, 2008) Creators: Richard Curtis and Anthony Minghella, w/ Jill Scott, Anika Noni Rose. Rating: NNNN DVD package: NNNN Rating: NNNN
Precious Ramotswe is the best TV private eye since Jim Rockford. A proud Motswana (citizen of Botswana), Precious opens her agency to help the troubled and solve mysteries with the bush skills her father taught her.
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Jill Scott infuses Precious with warmth, intelligence and complex social and emotional responses that often put her sense of propriety at war with the demands of the job.
Her cases are small and sometimes strange, like that of the deacon who disappears during a full-immersion baptism (taken from the Botswana news, according to source novel author Alexander McCall Smith). Throughout, Precious seeks to end trouble rather than bring criminals to justice, which lets the stories develop in interesting ways.
The tone is relaxed and gently comic, but Anika Noni Rose, as Precious’s secretary, is flat-out hilarious. She’s at once rigid and on fire with pride, ambition and a host of repressed emotions.
Along with a great look at the joys and tribulations of shooting in Botswana, a country with no filmmaking tradition or infrastructure, the extras provide a pair of excellent docs on the country and its music.
EXTRAS Two-hour pilot, six one-hour episodes, author’s diary, director Anthony Minghella doc, making-of doc, Botswana doc, Botswana music doc. Widescreen. English, Spanish audio. English, French, Spanish subtitles.
