I literally stumbled upon this Mystery! show by pure chance one night when I had my TV on in my room before bed. It this was before we had cable so I only had five channels. I can't remember which episodes PBS was showing that night, bur within the few minutes I had it one while I was getting changed it sucked me in. I watched the end of that episode and tried in vain to watch it next week, but I didn't understand how Mystery! worked and that it wasn't the same show every weekend. I now know better, but I also own a few on DVD.
All that being said I have recently been informed that this is based off novels and watching the beginning credits, which I must have not before, I see that indeed they are. I must get my hands on one of these to see if I enjoy them as much as the show. Anyway the story follows Detective Inspector Lynley and his partner Detective Sargent Havers as they run down and catch criminals. Simple enough and done on many other programs, but I think the reason I like this so much is the dynamic between Havers and Lynley. There is a partner, slightly romantic, kind of awkward, brother and sister, I don't even know relationship that pulls the story along. I have to say though if you haven't watched any British programming before it might take you a while to warm up to the characters.
This episode centers around the death of a famous cricket player and a radical group stealing dogs that are going to be used in testing. Now I know absolutely nothing about cricket and it makes no sense at all to me, but the episode still made perfect sense. Now I felt no sympathy for the man who died, he was divorcing his wife who had three children, shaking up with his agent, and also living with a wealthy woman. However I really was surprised at who the actual culprit was and though the dogs had nothing to do with the death it was needed to piece everything together. It was a brilliantly woven together crime and solution that was really fun to watch.
The relationship between the wealthy woman and her daughter was really touching and extremely heart breaking in the end. Olivia was so confused and so alone and had no idea what to do. Finally her and her mother are reunited and then everything goes wrong. I felt so bad for Olivia and wished that in the end something would have been done to help her. I also felt for the cricket players wife and son. The wife couldn't admit that he was leaving her and her children while the sixteen year old son was trying to take care of his family the best he could. There was a lot of heart in this episode which you didn't realize until the end.
Overall I think that it was a wonderful mystery that kept me on my toes. This might be because of my lack of knowledge of the cricket world, but I don't think that could be all. I always love a good mystery as well as crime show and I have always loved British programming so it isn't hard to see why I fell in love with this series. It might also have to do with the fact that if I ever became a cop I would probably be a lot like Havers.
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