Despite a respectful attitude toward the book — much of the dialogue is verbatim — Minghella and Curtis have condensed the considerable back story of Ramotswe's youth and alluded to her unhappy first marriage largely through well-placed flashbacks. In addition, the book's episodic nature is gently massaged, with the opening case of Happy Bapetsi stretched to recur throughout the first part of the pilot and the more serious case of a missing child introduced earlier. Of course, even with these changes, not much happens in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. But that, Precious Ramotswe would probably say, is how things have always been, and how they should remain.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency | HBO: begins March 29 @ 8 PM
Related:
Bad sports, Interview: Eugene Mirman, Boys' life, More 
- Bad sports
When historians trace the rise of the blog as the dominant journalistic form of the 21st century, they’ll pay close attention to two recent developments.
- Interview: Eugene Mirman
Much like the stand-up that has made him an alt-comedy mainstay, Eugene Mirman's first book, The Will to Whatevs (Harper Perennial), is a freewheeling mix of bemused ironies and trenchantly silly non-sequiturs.
- Boys' life
The premise for HBO's new half-hour comedy Hung (Sundays at 10 pm) is so over-the-top as to be cringe-worthy: high school basketball coach Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), divorced and broke, starts whoring himself to ladies on the basis of his giant schlong. I know: ugh.
- Big sleepy
If television is indeed a reflection of society, then to judge from what's on the screen these days, we're all surrounded by people leading seedy double lives.
- Flight of the Conchords | I Told You I Was Freaky
The New Zealand “folk-comedy” duo Flight of the Conchords transcended folk and comedy on their debut LP, a soundtrack to the absurdist HBO show of the same name, with genre parodies that were great songs in their own right.
- Interview: Bill Maher
"If liberals act like pussies, then they are pussies."
- Review: The Princess and the Frog
Fans of traditional animation will be relieved to learn that 2004's Home on the Range was not the final nail in Disney's 2-D toon coffin.
- Interview: Richard Lewis
"My dream [today] was bad. It was like a Jewish, Fellini-esque dragons-with-skulls-and-ex-girlfriends."
- Nothing beats nothing
Jerry Seinfeld held out on a Seinfeld reunion till last year, when he finally found a way to do a comeback that wasn't really a comeback. He and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David resurrected the greatest sit-com of the '90s as a show-within-a-show on David's Curb Your Enthusiasm . The reunion made Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer hilariously relevant again.
- Easy does it
Writer/producer Eric Overmyer was quoted in a New York Times Magazine article last month, but it’s worth repeating: “ Treme is not the The Wire .” He went on: “Those who are expecting The Wire or wanting The Wire may be frustrated.”
- Review: Sex and the City 2
Where does your 1998–2004 HBO hit series about sex and the single girl go when three of your four girls are no longer single? How about the United Arab Emirates?
- Less
Topics:
Television
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, More
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, R&B, Jill Scott, Jill Scott, Idris Elba, Anthony Minghella, Alexander McCall Smith, Botswana, Less
