The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Review

I am already starting to feel bad about the review I am about to write. Writing mean things about "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" is a bit like yelling at a kitten. It's so cute, and endearing, and it just wants to be loved. Yet, someone has to be the bad guy, and the Renegade Film Snob is certainly up to that task.

Lets ease on into this review and start with the positives.

As is expected from a network like HBO the series has great production values. The show is actually shot on location in Africa, and some of the scenery is so beautiful it looks like it was shot for the Botswana board of Tourism. The sets are authentic enough to be believable, but they also have a cuteness to them which makes you feel right at home. In some ways it reminds me of "Ugly Betty" it's a heightened and much cuter take on reality.

The cast is wonderful. I can't say enough about Jill Scott and her portrayal of Precious Ramotswe, she caries the entire show. Without her charm and believability the show would be lost. This is not to say that the other characters are poorly acted, but in the first episode they are very charming and well played stock characters. We have the uptight secretary, the gay hairdresser, the love interest, and even a sleazy philandering husband. As this is only the first episode I am going to give this show the benefit of the doubt and hope that more depth is added later.

The soundtrack is also very enjoyable.

Now to the bad stuff.

I have to admit that some of my disappointment with the series is due to my own high expectations. To make things clear I have not read the book series that inspired the show, my expectations came from the network itself. With Networks like HBO you expect things to be edgy. And no, I am not just talking about the sex, violence, and cursing which is often used in excess in HBO series; I am talking about edgy topics and experimental film.

HBO has conquered shows "Carnivale" and "John from Cincinnati" that were far too weird and convoluted for network television. It has also faced off on controversial topics like polygamy with "Big Love" or AIDS with "Angels in America". With it's big budgets and looser holds from the FCC networks like HBO and SHOWTIME are expected to push boundaries, but so far "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" hasn't pushed a single boundary.

I want to make this clear I'm not saying that a show needs to have a lot of violence, and sex, and cursing simply because they can. Point in fact I kind of wish they would tone down the amount sex scenes in "True Blood" but that's another topic entirely.

With a show set in Africa there are a lot of controversial topics that can be addressed, there are lots of experimental film techniques can be used, the show could go through the depths of gritty realism but it doesn't. Africa is a beautiful place and there are a lot of people there who live happy lives, and I'm glad that is represented. But people living happy normal lives anywhere in time or space is most certainly not what I expect when I tune into HBO.

I guess my problem is that the story itself is handled at such a slow and charming pace that I found I wasn't as upset by plot points as I should have been. Maybe I'm jaded from watching so many action and mystery films but there was no suspense for me.

There is a point in the story where Precious must make a long drive alone to a remote village to rescue a kidnapped child from practitioners of evil magic, she fearing that they may have cut off pieces of the child for use in spells. I should have been on the edge of my seat for that part of the show, but I wasn't. Nope I felt calm as I looked out on beautiful African scenery, there was never a doubt in my mind that Precious was going to be ok. Even when her life was threatened by a woman with a machete there was never even a hint that anything bad would actually happen. At least not in my mind.

I get that they are trying to do a cute and quaint slow moving story like the origional novels, but I'm not sure how well that translates to tv. Like many tv watchers I have a short attention span, I want a story that grabs hold of me and keeps me hooked. I'm not a fan of the slice of life cinema, I get to see enough normal human interaction in my own life thank you very much. When I watch something on the screen I want to to be bigger and more exciting then real life, and unfortunately "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" is just cuter and more charming then real life. Which would be great if it had an interesting plot to back it up.

I really hope the rest of the show is done using one hour long episodes. During the course of the two hour pilot episode Precious works on solving four cases at once. I felt like the intertwining of four separate storylines was too much. I am betting that in the books Precious works on solving multiple cases at the same time, but I'm not sure how that works for film. It felt forced, like the director had to work very hard to make them all fit in the same episode. At times it felt very disjointed, I am almost certain I would have liked the story better had it focused on Precious founding her detective agency and then working on just one or two cases.

Another problem that I had with the pilot of "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" is it's preachyness. It's awesome that the show has a proud "traditionally figured" African Woman, but there are times where the show seems to be patting itself on the back for doing just that. There were two or three times in the show where Precious talks about how much she loves Botswana. The first time it happened with the opening made total sense and was great, the other times it came up in the show just seemed preachy. I am sure that Botswana is a great place, and you should be proud of where you are from, but saying it multiple times in the same episode is just annoying. It made a lot of sense to do this on the pilot episode, but if she does two or three speeches a week about how much she loves her country I'm going to get sick of it pretty fast.

Think about it, if the show were about an American detective and we had to listen to one speech a week about how much he loved his country the show would have been canceled already (or at least be horribly reviewed) because that is freaking annoying.

I mean if your going to do a show about a proud African Woman, then do a show on a proud African woman. Let the film speak for itself, let her actions and attitudes speak louder then words, she doesn't need to make a patriotic speech every hour on the hour for the audience to get it and to get why it is important to the character.

As I said at the beginning of this blog, this is a show that just wants to be loved. It is cute, and quaint, with endearing characters in a beautiful setting; but the story needs work. I mean it's a fabulous advertisement for Botswana, because watching this makes me want to visit the country. The plot of "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" is just too slow moving, and has too many plots forced to intertwine to really hold my attention. The characters are cool enough to make me want to come back and watch another show, but if the next episode doesn't wow me I think I will have to find something else to watch on Sunday nights.