Botswana pays £2.5m to give McCall Smith's detective tales a TV audience
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
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In a large, almost empty land in southern Africa, they are queuing for walk-on parts in a television drama that will create another instalment in the astonishing success story of a whimsical academic from Edinburgh.
Alexander McCall Smith, emeritus professor of law, has written more than 60 books, some more serious than others. His worldwide fame rests on a light series of short novels - eight, so far - about an African woman who goes into business as a private detective.
Those who complain that Westerners only read about the bad things about African society should take note of McCall Smith's works. He describes a world in which starvation, violence, corruption, Aids and climate change barely exist, a pleasant world of simple people muddling through. It appeals to a predominantly middle-aged female readership and McCall Smith is, arguably, the UK's No 1 ladies' fiction writer.
The Botswana government has now invested £2.5m in a dramatisation of his novel The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, to be directed by Anthony Minghella. It is hoped that the TV movie will be the start of a series.
Jill Scott, a Philadelphia-born jazz singer and songwriter, will play the lead role as Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of Botswana's only female-owned detective agency. The singer and actress Anika Noni Rose, who starred in the film Dreamgirls, will play Ramotswe's secretary, Grace Makutsi. Lucian Msamati, who was much praised for his performance in the title role in the recent RSC production of Pericles, will play Ramotswe's suitor J L B Matekoni.
McCall Smith, 58, was born in Zimbabwe. He was educated in Bulawayo, and moved to Scotland to study law. He went back to Africa to help set up a law school at Botswana University.
When he was 30, he submitted two novels for a literary competition run by a Scottish publisher, one aimed at an adult audience, the other for children. The children's book won in its section and set him up as a children's writer. Many of his 30 books are either still in print, or being brought back into print by his subsequent success.
An image from his Botswana days of a woman pursuing chickens around a well-kept yard stuck in his memory. About 15 years afterwards, he started writing a short story about the life he imagined this woman might have been living, in which she used cattle inherited from her father to open a detective agency. The short story became a series of short stories then a novel, published in 1998, then eight novels.
"My writing didn't fit the received notions of what Scottish literature in the Eighties and Nineties was at all," he admitted in a later interview. "I was regarded as a bourgeois writer when everybody was being very aggressive, in-your-face. That was clear to me. I was resigned to that."
He may have missed the zeitgeist, but he was astoundingly successful. The novels have sold 14 million copies in 39 languages.
Minghella, the Oscar-winning director of The English Patient and Cold Mountain, expressed an interest at least three years ago in turning the novels into a television series. He told a film festival in Scotland, in 2004: "I think Precious can become the Morse of this era, in some ways. I love the challenge of bringing the world of Botswana to life on British and American television." That challenge is now under way. The team from Minghella's company, Mirage Productions, began work in Botswana this week, with the government's backing. The entire film will be shot in Botswana's capital, Gaborone, the Okavango delta and the Kalahari desert.
It may seem odd that an African nation, with a population of just 1.8 million, should be subsidising a production by a Hollywood company. But Botswana is a long way from being an African basket case. It has a stable, corruption-free democracy, paid for by a vast diamond industry. Botswana is the world's largest exporter of gems, and a major exporter of beef to the EU. This gives the country a respectable per capita income of £6,000 a year.
But its government has been concerned that the economy is too dependent on one industry and wants to diversify, if only to reduce an unemployment level that is above 20 per cent.
The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is already a useful local employer. For the past three weeks, freelance co-ordinators have been conducting auditions in Gaborone, for the 1,500 support roles and walk-on parts in the film. The government hopes the production will "help kick-start a film industry" in Botswana.
A writer's casebook
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Precious Ramotswe sets up her agency and investigates a missing husband, unmasks a conman and searches for a boy snatched by witch doctors.
Tears Of The Giraffe
Mma Ramotswe uncovers an unscrupulous maid and investigates the disappearance 10 years earlier of an American living on a desert farm.
Morality For Beautiful Girls
Cases include the suspected poisoning of a government official's brother and Mma Ramotswe's assistant assesses the moral integrity of a beauty pageant's contestants.
Blue Shoes And Happiness
Precious Ramotswe deals with a blackmail plot, sinister goings-on at the hospital, and a cobra she finds in her office.
The Kalahari Typing School For Men
Mma Ramotswe tracks down an ostrich farmer's ex-girlfriend and realises a husband suspected of cheating is doing so with her assistant.
In The Company Of Cheerful Ladies
An apprentice at Mma Ramotswe's husband's garage takes up with a married woman, leading the detective to an illegal drinking den.
