Entertainment Weekly reviews The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
TV Review
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (2009)
Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker is critic-at-large for EW
Drenched in sun-bright colors and the warmth of Jill Scott’s beaming smile, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is feel-good television in a way that’s startling from HBO, home of dark, rich stuff like The Wire and Six Feet Under. It’s easy to underestimate the adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling novels about a Botswanan divorcée–turned–private investigator. We’ve come to associate all things bleak and gloomy with art and profundity; by these standards, the glowing cheerfulness of No. 1 Ladies would seem to render it superficial entertainment. But airy buoyancy is every bit as difficult to convey on screen as heavy despair, and just because this tale of a jolly detective is light doesn’t mean it’s slight.
The American singer Scott plays Precious Ramotswe, who, having split from an abusive husband, decides to open up a one-woman detective agency in the small, dusty neighborhood of Gaborone. She doesn’t earn much money, but then, neither does anyone around her, and that doesn’t stop them from having problems (infidelity, fraud) that need solving. She’s not just a businesswoman, she says, she’s there to help ”the lost and the frightened.” Precious hires a new assistant, Mma Makutsi (Dreamgirls‘ Anika Noni Rose, all bespectacled eyes and brainy forehead), who blinks back incredulity when presented with a manual typewriter whose keys don’t all work properly. [Read more →]
