No 1 ladies detective agency in order1/25/2024 ![]() Instead Mma Ramotswe concentrates on bovine disappearances, witchcraft, and her relationship with her former husband, Note Mokoti. Ruaridh Nicoll, writing in the Observer, suggests, “The books can come across as portraits shielding reality.” ) It’s true that the problems explored in Mma Ramotswe’s Botswana Detective Agency do not include AIDS, poverty, inequality and widespread unemployment. Her assistant, Mma Makutsi, sensed another profound insight was imminent. And it was in these very trivial problems that the only begetter of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency specialized. There were the difficult problems, such as why a wheel was round, and the trivial, such as where her husband, Mr. “At age there were some things you just knew. John Crace’s digested read of “Blue Shoes and Happiness” captures the gist pretty well: Precious Ramotswe, the African Miss Marple, is rarely troubled by moral or existential woes. In contrast McCall Smith’s characters are sunny, cheerful, and just well really nice. Many books about Africa tend to be pretty dark think Coetzee’s Disgrace, Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Foden’s The Last King of Scotland, Theroux’s Dark Star Safari. If you look at music, do we expect all composers to write dirges?” ![]() But I don’t think that all books need to have that particular focus. In a recent interview Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith suggested, “There is this assumption that literature has to be very gloomy and grim and miserable.” He went on to explain, “ Fiction is able to encompass books that are bleak and which dwell on the manifold and terrible problems of our times. Then again, amid all the tumult in today’s busy and bustling dramas, that may be just the sort of soothing balm that could make both _BO and an acceptable swatch of its viewers _appy.P recious Ramotswe looks mildly concerned “Ladies’ Detective Agency” thus remains a small-boned construct, a series that departs from past pay TV heavyweights in possessing no more heft than a pleasant breeze. Subsequent episodes continue along these lines, creating a rather unusual procedural for HBO - one worth embracing less for the cases that cross Precious’ path than to simply bask in its atmosphere. Similarly, there are constant reminders that this is the Third World: Animals regularly walk through shots, Mma Makutsi must get by running the office using a typewriter with no “H” (and without a phone), and Precious gets driven around in a rickety old, consonant-challenged “atsun.” Even Scott’s robust figure - sneered at in the show by some local women - screams that this is a series that resembles few others. A third, edgier plot involves a missing child and a local gangster (“The Wire’s” Idris Elba).ĭirected by Minghella, this adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s novels is defined by its small character interactions and touches, from the way Mma Makutsi refers to the local hairdresser (“That man is very much like a woman”) to Precious’ sweet, awkward relationship with a widowed auto mechanic (Lucian Msamati), who is eager to assist her. Of course, the cases are as laidback - relative to the chalk-outline dramas that dominate primetime - as the African environs, from ascertaining whether a husband is cheating to figuring out if a newly arrived old gent is truly a woman’s long-lost father or merely a conniving mooch. After dad’s death and her experiences with an abusive husband, she moves to Botswana, where she decides to open a detective agency, predicated on her belief that “a woman knows what’s going on more than a man.”īusiness is slow at first, but cases gradually begin to find their way to Precious, and she gains a strong right hand in prim, crisply efficient secretary Mma Makutsi (Rose), who has technical skills but not much regard for male bosses. Introduced as a girl, Precious Ramotswe (Scott) has gained powers of observation and intuition from her father.
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