Minghella's legacy for detective fans

Published on Sunday 23 March 2008 21:28

A MAJOR TV series based on Alexander McCall Smith's novels is to go ahead, the author said yesterday, despite the sudden death of director Anthony Minghella.

A 20 million television film, The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, was broadcast last night as the BBC's flagship drama of the Easter weekend.

Directed by Minghella, it was to kick off a 13-part series, in a deal between the BBC and the HBO network in the United States announced just days before he died.

There was speculation in Hollywood last week that the series' future was up in the air, with the Home Box Office network in the US already struggling for a new hit drama series.

But McCall Smith, while stressing the decision was not his, said he was told at the film's London premiere that shooting on the new episodes would begin in August.

Minghella, tragically, had died that same day.

It was a "sad and odd" occasion, said McCall Smith, who praised the "upbeat and humane" film as Minghella's tribute to Botswana, where the film was made.

He added: "My understanding would be that everything was going to continue, but they need a new overseer. There's quite a team of people now, and I would have thought that there will be others who will keep the project going."

A BBC spokesman also said yesterday that the corporation was committed to co-producing at least six episodes, for which Minghella had already mapped out the storyline.

"From the BBC's perspective, it's a very tragic situation, but the commitment remains," he said.

The adventures of the Botswanan lady detective, the "traditionally-built" Precious Ramotswe, told in eight novels so far, have become world-wide best-sellers.

But the series, with the Grammy-winning, African-American soul singer Jill Scott cast in the lead role by Minghella, would potentially take the Edinburgh author's work to a massive new audience. Producers are reported to have signed a ten-year lease for land in Gaborone, in Botswana.

There they have built the fictional shopping centre where Precious opens her storefront detective agency.

Minghella, who won an Oscar for his film The English Patient, was due to oversee the series after directing the pilot, for which he co-wrote the script with Richard Curtis, writer and director of Love Actually.

He had talked of making it as popular as a new "Inspector Morse". He died aged 54 last Tuesday of complications from surgery for throat and tonsil cancer, on the day the TV film had its London premiere.

The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency went head to head last night with the opening episode of ITV1's He Kills Coppers, a police drama set in the 1960s.

While viewing figures were not available, critics declared the ITV show the winner. There was praise for actors like Idris Elba and David Oyelowo in the BBC show's all-black cast, but teasing remarks about Minghella's cosy adaption as "a Botswanan version of The Vicar of Dibley".

McCall Smith said he hoped the film would bring a different and positive view of Africa to television audiences from the usual images of war, famine and Aids.

"It's amazing how people feel if you write about Africa you must write a certain agenda, that you have to write about what is wrong, what is distressing," McCall Smith said.

"It would be like saying write about Scotland, and you write about urban deprivation and child poverty.

"You will see African people going about their day-to-day business, the same as anybody going about their business anywhere. There will be ordinariness," he said.

"It's not me being judged. It's a film-makers film, it's what Anthony Minghella has done, I think he's done something quite exceptional.

"It's a film with such an upbeat nature, and such a humane film. It's a lovely tribute to a country that he got to know both before and after he started filming there.

"He went there a stranger and understood what people of that country felt about their country. He did it with respect and courtesy."

SADNESS IN BOTSWANA

ALEXANDER McCall Smith has received a stream of messages from Botswana expressing sadness over the death of Anthony Minghella.

The government of Botswana put $5 million (2.5 million) into the $40 million film of the author's book and sent a large delegation of tourism officials to the London premiere.

"They were very upset," McCall Smith said yesterday.

"They trusted him. They appreciated the fact that he resisted calls to film it elsewhere."

Minghella was busily promoting the TV film right up until the operation that was to lead to his death, saying it was "a real labour of love, but lovely labour".

The director was forced to shoot his American Civil War drama, Cold Mountain, in Romania for cost reasons, and he was determined to make The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in the country in which it was set.