There are so many reasons to watch "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," which premieres Sunday night on HBO, that it's hard to choose which one to lead with. So we'll go with what viewers experience first: the green and golden glory of Africa.
Set and shot in Botswana, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" is based on the successful series of the same name by Alexander McCall Smith and co-written and executive produced by Richard Curtis ("Four Weddings and a Funeral," "The Girl in the Cafe") and the late Anthony Minghella ("Cold Mountain," "The English Patient"). The patina of that remarkable pedigree is visible from the very first moment the camera soars over the verdant river banks and dusty plains, the haughty giraffes and startled meerkats, lighting then upon the modest village that's home to Precious Ramotswe (Jill Scott).
Even before we see her on-screen, Scott, a three-time Grammy winner, is a revelation; her summer-glazed creamy tones are the reason the voice-over was invented. Precious slowly tells of her loving father and his insistence that she learn everything a boy would, and soon we learn that, as a child, she solved a village argument over the ownership of a cow. Then somewhere amid the rising white dust and glimmering insects, it becomes clear that this show will restore the premium cable network to its former stature as the most surprising place on television.
As the title would indicate, this is a criminal procedural, but not since Jane Marple upended the detective construct with her fleecy shawls and quiet parochial insights has there been a detective so outside the far-flung borders of convention. Languid is not the goal of most detective shows, network or cable, but languid, in the best, lovely and strangely invigorating sense, this show is.
Into a world dominated by sociopaths, depressives, addicts and other broken heroes comes Precious, an earth mother in brightly colored batik, with her abiding belief in the basic goodness of life. After her father dies and leaves her wealth in the form of 180 cows, Precious leaves her village for the town of Gaborone where she becomes a detective because, she says, she loves her country, Botswana, and because people want to know things, to understand why things have happened to them. And she would like to help them.
