Last year, I had the opportunity to interview Amin Maltaqa, director of a beautiful film called Captain Abu Raed, which was shot in Jordan. I asked Amin about the lighting, because the entire film seemed to be bathed in this golden glow. He said much of it was filmed specifically in an area blessed with that natural glow.
That’s the first thing I thought of while watching The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, HBO’s new series which premiered Sunday night. Filmed in Botswana, the entire show had a similar golden glow, like someone had washed the film in lovely sepia tones. And that’s just part of its allure. The episode was filled with African animals, bright colors, stunning landscapes, and little of the squalor we might expect in a show filmed in South Africa.But most of all, it has Jill Scott, a singer/actress (and two-time Grammy winner) who plays the main character of Mma Precious Ramotswe. Based on the bestselling books by Alexander McCall Smith, Precious is a determined, buxom woman who leaves her abusive husband and opens up Botswana’s first female-headed detective agency in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital city.
I’ll venture to say that Scott has a glow about her, too, a zest for life that must certainly go beyond the screen and into her own life. She’s big and beautiful and dresses in brilliantly colored clothes that make our fashions in the United States seem downright drab.
Scott’s character, Precious, uses her father’s teachings about instinct, intuition, and senses to their full advantage solving cases in the detective agency — a cheating husband, a missing boy, and a case of identity theft, Botswana style.
Assisting are her loyal secretary Mma Makutsi (Anika Noni Rose), her funny hairdressing neighbor, BK (Desmond Dube), and her trusted friend JLB Matekoni (Lucian Msamati), who perhaps is yearning for more than just friendship.
During an era when so many TV shows are steeped in car chases, explosions, gunfire, sci-fi action, and torrid affairs, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency stands out as a gentle series, telling the story through human nature and relationships rather than quick and easy thrill rides.
Will people watch it? I hope so, because it brings us back to a sense of values and human connections so often lacking in our modern world.
Clacked by Jane Boursaw 
on Mar 30, 2009 @ 15:00 EST5EDT
I don’t know how it will go in the US but I thought the premiere episode was charming and quaint. I was a bit apprehensive when I heard the female leads were American actors however Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose were brilliant.
FYI, Mma Ramotswe is ‘traditionally built’ not buxom.