The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: The Complete First Season
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DVD details
Actor: Jill ScottBrand: HBO Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 451 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-09-08
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: HBO
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Box set; Color; Dolby; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; Closed-captioned; NTSC
DVD Reviews of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: The Complete First Season
DVD Review: A Delightful Time with Mma Ramotswe...
Summary: 5 Stars
... is truly what you get when watching this series!
So many other reviewers have described this TV-series so well. So I won't write another review like that, but rather share my feelings after having seen all 7 episodes included on this DVD on TV.
This sure is a type of series rare today. Sure, I love many Hollywood series, but not only is this not one, it is totally different. I have not read the books, only watched the series as it has been televised in Norway this summer. But I have loved each and every minute of it. Actually, I have even watched every episode twice, first on the day it has been televised, then replayed it a few days later together with a visitor. There aren't many series I would have done that with! Most TV series aren't of a kind that I could watch twice in a week!
This series is just different. It has so much warmth. It even has something as rare today as real politeness and etiquette, but served to us in a charming and humourous way, if I may put it that way. The characters are played in a way where you might at first think that they are "overplaying", but you soon discover how it is just perfect! I wouldn't have it any other way, the way they act in this series is just 100% (not 97%! ;) ) correct in this context. It is one of the many things that give the series the abundance of charm that it has!
I have had the pleasure of visiting 4 African countries, and watching this made me remember so many little things I experienced there. So even if it is dramatized like it is, it really feels authentic too. The series shows some of the sad things that happens to us human beings as well as tough and sad sides of Africa, e.g. that so many suffer from HIV/Aids, but this sure is no sad series as one might think, maybe Africans have a way of handling hardship with humour in a way that is rare for most of us? Well, if some place on this earth qualifies better for something like that, it would be no surprise if it was Africa, if you know what I mean? And that is one of the things that is so charming with this series, that they manage to incorporate so many serious subjects (there's always some moral to the episode), giving us a little reminder of this and that, all while making us smile and chuckle, and watch in suspense too. The characters, especially Mma Ramotswe, also show so much compassion for other people. She often uses her own tough experiences in her work as a detective. Losing a child and having had an abusive husband, is something that helps her in her meetings with [potential] clients. She is not just a tough detective, but rather an empathic and warm one - and very humble too. She's not one to brag about her accomplishments, she's quite a modest woman, but she might do a little victory dance (when we're not watching) together with her secretary (and later Assisting Detective) Mma Matekoni a.k.a. Miss 97% from The Secretarial College of Botswana... ;)
This series have some fantastic characters, I think, and the actors really play them well too, with a lot of heart, you might say. You soon come to feel quite fond of these characters and I sure did not want the series to end. The only negative thing I can say about it, is that it is only 7 episodes. I wish there had been 70, so that even if this season was over, I had much to look forward to.
I sure hope that somebody will pick this up and continue the series. With all these books, there must be a lot to use... :)
Happy watching, Mma & Rra! :)
Description of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: The Complete First Season
Based on the best-selling novels by Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies? Detective Agency tells the uplifting fictional story of a Botswana woman who fulfills a longtime dream ? and bucks daunting odds ? by opening her country?s first and only female-owned detective agency.The lead hails from the U.S. and the creators come from the U.K., but The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency celebrates Botswana, "the finest place on God's Earth," as surely as a woman?s intuition. In his final directorial effort, Anthony Minghella joins forces with producer/co-writer Richard Curtis for the pilot, in which Precious Ramotswe (Grammy-winning singer Jill Scott) makes her debut. After her father dies, Mma Ramotswe sells his cows and opens an agency, because she "wants to do good." So, the "traditionally built woman" (in the words of Anthony McCall Smith, who wrote nine books about her) leases the old Gabarone post office, hires hyper-efficient secretary Grace Makutsi (Anika Noni Rose, Dreamgirls), and gets down to business.
With sassy hairdresser BK (Desmond Dube) and smitten mechanic JLB Matekoni (Lucian Msamati) cheering her on, Mma Ramotswe becomes a combination detective/feminist icon, sharing "endless cups of red bush tea" with her clients, encouraging women to take charge of their lives, and tackling tricky cases involving missing persons, duplicitous daddies, dangerous dentists, and unfaithful spouses (MI-5's David Oyelowo plays one of them). Produced for the BBC/HBO and filmed in Africa, the first season eschews gunplay and profanity for a fresh take on the small-town mystery series. Like Agatha Christie's Marple, but with fewer dead bodies, Mma Ramotswe depends more on her wits than technology.
In his author's diaries, McCall Smith reveals that "Minghella had long wanted to film my novels." Tim Fywell and Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited) handle the remaining six episodes, while other distinguished guests include Prime Suspect's Colin Salmon as Ramotswe's ne'er-do-well ex-husband and Emmy nominee CCH Pounder as a mother searching for a lost son. Why Rose, who turns on a dime between comedy and tragedy, didn't also receive Emmy recognition, however, is the show's real mystery. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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