![]() ![]() No matter her naïvete: she knows her own business. He also happens to be gay, a point underlined when Grace observes, “That man is very much like a woman,” a moment that (re)establishes her limited worldly experience, as well as her propensity to speak her mind. To negotiate these distinctly masculine turmoils, Precious assembles a team of “others,” including an extremely proper, high-voiced secretary, Grace (Anika Noni Rose) and a hair stylist named BK (Desmond Dube), whose “Last Chance Salon” happens to service Precious’ catty detractors. Her first cases, in this first, two-hour installment, directed by the late Anthony Minghella, feature some standard-seeming villains, from a “dubious” father to a cheating husband to a gangster who uses witchcraft as well as gun violence to frighten his victims. ![]() That she lives in “Africa,” here mythically colorful and charming (as well as apparently poverty-and-AIDS-free), a place where families struggle, couples fight, and communities work toward some sort of stability and order. Precious combines traditional wisdom and youthful idealism, maternal gentleness and spunky intuition. Based on a series of 10 best-selling novels by Alexander McCall Smith, the series doesn’t mean to dig deeply into contemporary African social problems or politics, instead, it offers up middlebrow mysteries that can be solved in an episode’s time, a heroine who is keenly observant and positively feminine, a vague sort of half-step forward from Nancy Drew or Jessica Fletcher. As a detective, she says, she means to “do good with the time God has given me.” It’s a sweet and sentimental notion, reinforcing her difference from those gossips and naysayers who doubt her resolve. Yes, Precious has suffered back in the village, but now she looks forward to better days in the city of Gaborone. Mournful flashbacks indicate she still misses him, too, though she tells his lawyer, “The last time he spoke to me was with his fist and the buckle of his belt, the last time was at the funeral for the child I lost because of that beating.” Precious has also left behind an abusive husband, a bluesy-jazz trumpet player named Note (Colin Salmon). For one thing, she has just months ago lost her dear father, who taught her “many, many things,” primarily, she says, “To love my country Botswana, the finest country on earth, and all the creatures great and small that live here… except snakes” (no mention of a dear mother, and no images of her during early scenes of father-and-child sharing sunlight and big skies). The 35-year-old Precious, by contrast, has already lived a full and difficult life, indicated in the first few moments of HBO’s The No. The women are surely cruel and shallow, indicated by their own long and lithe figures, their exposed midriffs and carefully styled hair. She bows her head as she overhears more loud commentary from the women across the street: “She is the size of a small elephant! How could she go undercover?” ![]() Seated below the newly hand-painted sign, a cup of tea held primly in her lap, is Precious Ramotswe (Jill Scott), the only lady detective in Botswana. 1 Ladies Detective Agency,” in a building that was recently a post office and even more recently a donkey’s stable. “A woman cannot be a detective.” So says one of a group of women.
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