Pop Vultures

I was working in a bookshop when The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith was first published, and I remember that there was some debate over whether we should shelve it in the crime fiction section or not. It did, after all, purport to be about a detective agency. But the jacket design (lots of bright colours and African prints) didn’t seem to fit in with the normal crime fiction jacket traditions (black cover, sinister picture involving blood and/or a disembodied eye). So, taking one for the team, I read the book and promptly reported back that it definitely didn’t belong in crime fiction. We shelved it in general fiction, and began recommending it to all women of a certain age who came in asking for ‘a nice book’. I sent a copy to my Mum - she loved it.

The book, you see, is a gentle tale about Precious Ramotswe, a young woman from Botswana who uses her inheritance to set up a detective agency, where she spends her days settling neighbourly disputes over cow ownership and never gets involved in anything more sinister than spying on the occasional philandering husband. The stories (and there are several - McCall Smith wrote a whole series) contain many ‘characters’, and crime solving takes a back seat to loving descriptions of Bostwanan social life and customs.

The late Anthony Minghella’s film version (this was, in fact, his final completed work) takes an entirely different approach. The problems of modern-day Africa are brought to the forefront. HIV, witchcraft, kidnapping, child mutilation and corruption become the focus of Precious’s investigations, although she still dabbles in philandering husbands on the side. Instead of the sunshine-and-laughter escapism of the books we get gritty social commentary and a heroine haunted by her escape from a violent husband and a miscarried baby.

Minghella doesn’t entirely dispense with the light-heartedness with which McCall Smith imbued the books. The ‘characters’ are all there - Precious’s hopeless suitor Mr Matekoni is delightful in his steady devotion, and I was particularly fond of the secretary, Grace Makutsi, who valiantly struggles with two typewriters which both have several letters missing but combined can type the full alphabet. I was also delighted to see the wonderful Idris Elba (The Wire’s Stringer Bell) playing the villain, proving that he can be sinister, threatening, and yet still achingly cool, in any accent.

Television versions of books are not obliged to be faithful to the texts on which they’re based, and it can be argued that they shouldn’t even try. TV and text aren’t the same, and naturally the story is going to emerge a little differently. Minghella’s portrayal of Botswana in The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is, almost without doubt, a more realistic one than the idyllic and simple land where the sun always shines (literally and metaphorically) in McCall Smith’s books, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But there’s no doubt that by emphasising the real, some of the charm of the original stories is lost, and I wonder if that was the intention.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is currently available to view on the BBC iPlayer, and it will no doubt be repeated endlessly on the BBC anyway - they’re going to milk the fact that they commissioned Minghella’s last film for all it’s worth. If you’re outside the UK, I’m willing to bet this will be coming to a network near you sooner rather than later. Keep an eye out - it’s worth a look.