Ashley Jensen to star in new Sky1 ‘quirky’ crime drama

Since it shamefully ditched the superb Thorne (based on the Mark Billingham’s excellent fictional detective series) Sky1 has been a bit quiet in the crime drama genre. Yes, we’ve had Charlie Brooker’s often laugh-out-loud piss take of procedurals in Touch Of Cloth, but now the channel is giving us something a little more serious and substantial, this time focusing on the amateur sleuth sub-genre with a new one-off to air at Christmas. What’s more, Ashley Jensen has been announced to star.

Agatha Raisin And The quiche Of Death (oookkkay then) is based on the novel series by MC Beaton, and has been adapted by Stewart Harcourt, from Hamish Macbeth fame.

Agatha Raisin, PR whizz, gives up her successful life in London, landing with a bang in the quiet village of Carsely with hopes of beginning a new dream life. Bored, lonely and used to getting her own way, Agatha finds that life in the Cotswolds isn’t quite the picture-perfect existence she imagined and when her highflying city attitude is met with puzzlement and suspicion from country locals, Agatha enlists the few allies she can find. Among them are DC BILL WONG, a lovelorn local policeman, Gemma Simpson, her suffer-no-fools cleaning lady, and Roy Silver, a faithful former assistant from London. But with her unique brand of feisty truth telling finding little favour, it seems the community is not quite ready for the acerbic Agatha.

In an attempt to ingratiate herself, Agatha enters the annual quiche making competition and inadvertently becomes a suspect in a murder case.  As her reputation sinks ever lower, and any hopes of romance with her dashing ex-Army neighbour James Lacey swiftly thwarted, Agatha has no choice but to clear her name and earn the respect of her fellow villagers. Determined to wring out the truth, Agatha sets about solving the mystery of the quiche of death.

Look out for it around Christmas.

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