Saturday evening television mysteries are a staple of the small screen and very few are made for the under-60s. Inspector Boring. The Doctor Deathbed Mysteries. Sally Pensioner Investigates. The names are a blur.
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Which makes Agatha Raisin (Saturdays, ABC1, 7.30pm) something rather lovely to behold. It's based on a book, by M.C. Beaton, and if you take the books at face value, it could very quickly be soaked in formaldehyde and turned into something perfectly suited for the half-asleep, one-eyeball on the respirator set.
Instead, writer Stewart Harcourt has given us a heroine who is sexy, smart-mouthed and, thanks to an early retirement from the cyclonic world of London PR, hoping to return to the last moment she was truly happy, in a holiday cottage in the Cotswolds. (Aren't we all?)
Needless to say the bodies begin to drop like afternoon sun-showers, leaving the show very slightly crippled by what is now known as The Midsomer Murders Effect. That is, an alarmingly sharp rise in the death rate in small English village for the purpose of keeping the local Miss Marple, or in this case, Miss Raisin, on the case.
Beaton's novels are rather stiff, and in this case they came to television the long way round. In fact, it was a radio adaptation of Agatha Raisin that was considered by fans of the literature to be the "definitive" version of the tale.
The radio series starred British staple Penelope Keith, as a sort of post-Margot Leadbetter, with a dash of Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, iteration of Agatha, all pompous and grand. For television we get the lovely Ashley Jensen, a wee Scots lass lately of The Office and Ugly Betty.
Jensen's Agatha is much richer in texture, and far more likeable. What was almost a case of deliberate cantankerousness in the radio character, is instead replaced with a more relatable, likeable personality.
This Agatha Raisin isn't so different from us; she is tired of the rat-race and yearning for something simpler. (SeaChange, anyone?)
The television series brings Beaton's novels to the screen brilliantly, kicking off with the most famous in the series, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. That mystery is cut straight from classic British tropes: small villages, baking competitions and neighbourhood busybodies.
Jensen is brilliant, but she was ever thus. As is Matthew Horne, from The Catherine Tate Show, who gays it up as Roy, Agatha's former PR sidekick who joins her in sleuthing.
They're hardly Sherlock and Dr Watson, but they make an effective and likeable pair.The discoveries are Katy Wix as Gemma, the local cleaning girl who Agatha poaches from a surly neighbour as soon as she lands in Carsley, and Matt McCooey as Bill Wong, the local constable who is entirely perplexed by this noisy, unapologetic London tornado who lands on his beat.
Together, with Agatha's cat, they're almost a post-modern Famous Five.
With the longer structure of a television series, and a more nuanced adaptation, this Agatha Raisin gets to spread her wings, and Jensen plays along masterfully.
Fiercely independent but still delightfully girlish when the dashing, dishy neighbour James Lacey (Jamie Glover) steps into the frame, Jensen's Agatha is mostly snarls and giggles, but there are deeply touching moments in the series, and Jensen rises to the occasion, giving us a heroine who is fierce, sharp and, rarely for television, astonishingly authentic.