Botswana Sleuth.(The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

Byline: editor: Valerie Steiker

Jill Scott charms and delights Joan Juliet Buck in Anthony Minghella's last film, which kicks off a new series on HBO .

The pilot for The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (HBO) is the last film and a labor of love by the great director Anthony Minghella, who died suddenly a year ago. The seven-episode series is based on the hugely successful novels of Scotsman Alexander McCall Smith, about the adventures of Precious Ramotswe, a young Botswanan woman who sells the 180 cows her father left her to open a detective agency in a disused post office. Minghella shows her as a chunky child taught to be observant by her father, who trains her memory by having her list, eyes closed, the objects he has placed before her. They are a shortcut description of her country: "Ostrich egg, ostrich feather, Botswana flag, baboon skull, baobab seed. . . ." The swaying and stately Jill Scott plays the adult Precious with such alien dignity that I didn't register her as the American R&B singer at all. The dusty, paradoxical nature of Botswana is brilliantly drawn by Minghella with a mixture of documentary realism and exalted passion.

At first no one comes to the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency ...