Delightful. Now I've had emails from readers who complain that anything with a British accent gets at least a "Recommended" rating from me (oh yeah? Check out Gandhi). As an unabashed Anglophile, I make no pretense about British TV; I love it. But it's important to remember that the American cable TV and home video markets tend to get the cream of the British program crop; for every Monty Python and The Office sent across the pond, there are ten times as many minor, middling shows we'll never hear about. So I'm always on the look-out for something I've never seen or heard about from British TV, and I was rewarded this past month with the plucky, charming mystery series, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: The Complete Collection, produced from 1996 to 1998. All 27 episodes of the four series (seasons) are here, as well as the pilot episode (previously, these episodes had been released as separate season box sets).

Starring the indomitable Patricia Routledge (Keeping Up Appearances), Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: The Complete Collection contains quite a few elements of the British drawing room or "cozy" mysteries that lovers of that genre crave: a slow, steady, almost staid pace, plenty of rainy, drizzly location work, a relatively bloodless supply of crimes, various suspicious, eccentric suspects, and a methodical, almost plodding crime solver who could never be mistaken for a man or woman of physical action. Now, that might sound like I'm describing a typical Christie Miss Marple story, but although some similar characteristics of the Christie mold are evident in this whodunit series, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates is hardly a Marple knock-off.

First and foremost, Miss Marple was considerably older than Wainthropp, and a spinster to boot. Wainthropp has just turned 60 (in the first series), and she's married to homebody husband Robert (Derek Benfield). Miss Marple was an amateur sleuth; Hetty runs a detective agency out of her house. Miss Marple often worked alone; Hetty has an unlikely sidekick, the 17-year-old Geoffrey (Dominic Monaghan), who started out as a shoplifter in Hetty's post office, and to whom Hetty takes a liking and brings along into the world of detective work. And Miss Marple dealt exclusively in murder cases; Hetty studiously tries to avoid them.

But aside from the obvious dissimilarities between the two characters, what really made Hetty Wainthropp Investigates stand out for me was its insistence on deglamorizing the genre. With so many English drawing room murder mysteries, it's inevitable that the very characteristics of the genre will become coded, anticipated, and after many incarnations, essentially glamorized in their depictions. Lovers of this genre look forward to the "Englishness" of the pieces as much as for the mysteries themselves, with equal appreciation going out to the eccentric performances by the British supporting players, the cozy production designs for the libraries and sitting rooms where the action takes place, and the deliberately chosen, picturesque locales that instantly place us in England.

I didn't see a lot of that in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. Our first introduction to Hetty is in her tiny, plain, rather ugly bedroom, where she sits up in bed in her housecoat, lamenting the fact that she's turned 60 and that other than being a housewife, she has little purpose in life - hardly a glamorous or "quaint" moment. And the surroundings Hetty frequently finds herself in - run-down neighborhoods, squats, tenements - hardly captures the picturesque drolleries of the various Marple films and TV series. The England of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates is a lot closer, I suspect, to the real England than what we see in most of those other "cozies."

And while the mysteries are all relatively tame and even at times, humdrum (again, perhaps closer to reality than most movie mysteries), there's always an underlying dramatic framework that's trying to get at depicting the stresses and tensions of life in modern England. One episode in particular that struck me, Fisticuffs, from the third season, deals with a woman involved in a hit-and-run accident. After the initial collision, the victim is then physically beaten - for no apparent reason - by the driver. It's such a random, incomprehensible, violent act - and one, distressingly, not unknown to many people - that Hetty comes to share the victim's personal outrage at the senselessness of the act; they both want to know "why" more than they want punishment. Hetty's reasons for getting involved often have little to do with the actual money she's paid; she wants order brought to unjust situations (not at all unlike Marple, who understood all too well - and detested - moral corruptness), and it's this spirit of activism, along with the sometimes depressed nature of the stories and their surroundings, that gives Hetty Wainthropp Investigates a bit of a noteworthy edge.

While I would imagine that some would find the pairing of the 60+ Hetty and the teenaged Geoffrey far-fetched, I found it quite poignant, actually, particularly during the first few episodes of the first season, as Hetty watches, as she puts it, Geoffrey "blossom" under her care. Seeing that he's wasting his time stocking shelves in a supermarket, and believing he's better than just a common thief, Hetty's insistence on treating Geoffrey with firmness and love is a rather touching and unexpected development. And Monaghan, perfectly suited to this role, does an excellent job of conveying the obvious joy and relative peace that comes when someone finally shows an interest in him, and expects him to be more than what he had settled for. The two actors make a great pair: one gruff yet obviously loving, the other young, street-smart, but in no way malicious or tough. They're a terrific detective team (with husband Robert - played wittily by Derek Benfield - really more of a supporting member); it's a shame the popular series only ran four abbreviated seasons.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full screen video image for Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: The Complete Collection isn't the greatest. It's not a matter of the transfer, but in the original elements, which often appear grainy and soft. Colors are a bit on the faded side, as well. Just a note on the packaging; as with Acorn Media's The House of Eliott DVD box set I reviewed, all 13 discs are neatly filed away in a surprisingly slim book-like plastic holder. The only problem is that the individual disc holders are ridiculously tight. Now, I'm sure we've all experienced getting DVDs in the mail that were rattling around inside their boxes, all scratched up. But Acorn Media has the gone to the other extreme here; many of the discs were so tight, I was sure I would break them trying to get them out. Often, I had to bend the discs so severely to get them to pop out, I was amazed they didn't snap in two. I understand security is a plus when shipping discs, but this is ridiculous.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo mix is adequate for dialogue-heavy production, and most welcome are the optional close-captions.

The Extras:
The original 1991 pilot episode, Missing Persons, which was based on the book by David Cook, is included here. Evidently, there wasn't much interest in the pilot until after Routledge finished her enormously successful stint on Keeping Up Appearances, thus the delay of five years between the pilot and the series (which was reworked from the original source material). There's also a short interview with Routledge about the series, as well as some text production notes, cast filmographies, and a photo gallery.

Final Thoughts:
I had a marvelous time watching all of the Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: The Complete Collection episodes. Routledge and Monaghan make for a winning - and touching - detective team, and the socially conscious mysteries, although not exactly surprising, do add a nice twist to the traditional English drawing room mystery genre. And that fact that the entire series is gathered into this one box set means you can dive right in and experience the subtle shifts in the leads' relationships more readily. I highly recommend Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: The Complete Collection