In the UK: Sunday 23rd March, BBC1, 9pm. Series starts next year
In the US: HBO, but no airdate yet
Some TV programmes are easier to review than others. Some are a lot harder.
Take The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, for instance. I’ve not read the book or any of its sequels. But that’s all right, surely? As the name suggests, it’s a crime novel (of sorts) about a detective agency, and it’s easy enough to judge a show on its own merits, just as you can judge The Tudors without having a degree in history – although it would help.
But another obstacle is the fact it’s set in Botswana, which is where the TV series is shot. What do I know about Botswana? I know where it is, thanks to my recent, slightly pointless project to memorise the map of Africa. But I’ve never been there. I know some Africans, and quite a lot of my neighbours are from Africa, but none, to my knowledge, are from Botswana. I know nothing about its culture, its people, or its languages. I can rip the piss out of Lost for making London a tad too rainy and not putting a Belisha Beacon in front of Covent Garden underground station. But a TV show could stick a giant inflatable statue of Norman Wisdom in every town in Botswana, say he was their Prime Minister, and I wouldn’t know if that was authentic or not without a good deal of Googling and Wikipediaing – although I’d have my suspicions.
All the same, let’s give it a go with a little assistance from my viewing panel: my mother-in-law, who has read all the Alexander McCall-Smith books, and my wife, from whom she borrowed them and who is to reading books what I am to watching tele (but who spends the time she would have spent blogging reading more books instead of writing about them).
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