ShareThisThere are some places that, when you arrive there, you just know you're in a good place.
The last time I told you to watch a TV show was years ago, a series called "Ed." Or maybe it was "Courting Alex." I forget which. I liked both shows, and I was sure you'd like them, too. That's why I told you about them.
Well, that and the fact they both co-starred my oldest child.
I was proud of the boy. Still am. Always will be. But I occasionally find a show that I like, even if it doesn't star somebody I've given birth to.
Take, for instance, HBO's new weekly series, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," which premiered Sunday.
I do not personally know anyone in the cast -- though one smile from Jill Scott (who stars as Precious Ramotswe, the first and only female detective in all of Botswana) and it's easy to feel you've known her forever.
But I have had the pleasure of meeting the author of the books on which the show is based.
In the fall of 2002, I spent a month on a lake in North Carolina, watching leaves change their colors and catching up on my reading.
After two weeks, I had read every printed material in sight, from a stack of books I brought with me to a pile of newspapers I found stuffed in a wall.
Withdrawal for a book junkie is literary hell. Lucky for me, books are still legal. I drove to a bookstore, collared a dealer and said, "Help me, I need a fix!"
She handed me "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith.
"Careful," she whispered, "it's the first in a series."
And suddenly I found myself in that very "good place," where you stay up all night turning pages just for pleasure.
After returning to California, I plowed through the series ("Tears of the Giraffe," "Morality for Beautiful Girls," "The Kalahari Typing School for Men"), pacing the floor awaiting each new release.
Book junkies don't like to read alone. We love getting others hooked, too. I told everybody I knew about those novels, gave copies as gifts. ("The first one is free.")
I also took part in a "One Read" program at the Monterey Public Library, leading a discussion on "No. 1 Ladies'." Before the discussion, I interviewed the author (a middle-aged medical professor-turned-novelist, who seemed as charming as his characters) and asked him about the country where the series is set.
"Botswana," he said, "is the sort of place that when you arrive there, you just realize you're in a good place."
The same is true of his books. From first page to last, you know you're in a "good place."
I've now read all nine novels in the series (after wrestling them away from my husband) and can't wait to get the 10th, soon to be released, "Tea Time for the Traditionally Built."
Imagine my delight a year ago when McCall Smith spoke in Las Vegas and said his series was coming to television.
I watched this week's premiere twice. In one scene, Ramotswe sits on the porch of her new detective agency, fearing she'll never have a client. Sensing her pain, her neighbor, a hairdresser, comes over to say he has many clients with lots of problems and he will send them all to her.
It's not often television can capture so profoundly the sense of caring and community that many of us hunger for.
If that scene doesn't make you smile, you might want to watch, say, "Real Housewives of Orange County."
But if you're looking for a "good place" to be, check out "No. 1 Ladies'." I'll save a seat for you on the porch.
(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077, or at www.sharonrandall.com.)
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