I know quite a bit about the country, because my family has known and loved it for a century. This has brought wealth, which is astonishingly sensibly administered.įilming: Jill Scott in character in the No.1 Ladies' Detective AgencyĪ sign at the airport in Gabarone, the capital, proclaims: "We do not tolerate corruption in Botswana". But it now has the world's largest diamond mine. Barely two million people live there.įor many years, it was poor and primitive. The size of Texas, it lies north-west of South Africa and is mostly composed of sand - the great Kalahari Desert. But there remain a few places which are relatively tranquil, and Botswana is one. It is true that most of Africa is steeped in blood and misery. "I invented Precious Ramotswe on a whim," says this amiable, retired academic, now with 40 books to his name, "when I really intended to write about something else." But it seemed irredeemably and pointlessly horrible.Īlexander McCall Smith, by contrast, created a fairy tale, rooted in his time living in Botswana during the Eighties. I came out acknowledging that the film was superbly well-made. It tells the story of a mass-murderer who dispatches 20-odd innocent people, mostly in close-up, on screen. It has no passion, no depth, no edge, no nothing".īut this, it seems to me, says much more about our ghastly current cinematic expectations than about the Ladies' Detective Agency.Ĭompare and contrast Sunday night's film with this year's top Oscar winner, No Country For Old Men. set in an African country where smiley, happy people, cardboard cut-out characters, go about their business with good humour, hard work, morality and diligence. One called it "twee, quaint, shallow, possibly patronising.
The baddies were put to flight or sent to jail, harmony was restored and everybody celebrated with a sing-song. soul singer Jill Scott played Precious Ramotsweīut nothing like that happened.
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