The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1987)

Directed by

Jim Goddard, Bill Hays, Mary McMurray, Mike Vardy

Genre

drama television series

Country

United Kingdom

Length

12 seasons, 79 episodes

Rated

TV-14

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 12 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This series adapts crime stories by Ruth Rendell, mostly following Inspector Reg Wexford as he solves murders. Later episodes branch into other characters and shorter tales, sometimes combining multiple plot threads.

slow-burncerebralrestraineddetective-likeatmosphericmethodicalunderstatedintricate

What happens

The Ruth Rendell Mysteries is a British television crime drama series, produced by TVS and later by its successor Meridian Broadcasting, in association with Blue Heaven Productions, for broadcast on the ITV network. Twelve series were broadcast on ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000. Created by author Ruth Rendell, the first six series focused entirely on her main literary character, Chief Inspector Reg Wexford, played by George Baker. Repeat airings of these series changed the programme's title to The Inspector Wexford Mysteries. However, later series shifted focus to other short stories previously written by Rendell, with Wexford featuring in only three further stories, in 1996, 1998 and 2000. When broadcast, these three stories were broadcast under the title Inspector Wexford. In some cases stories were expanded from Rendell's original material or elements from a number of stories were woven together into one episode. A smaller number of episodes were based on Rendell's full-length novels, such as The Strawberry Tree starring Simon Ward, Going Wrong starring James Callis, A Case of Coincidence starring Keith Barron and Ronald Pickup, Front Seat starring Janet Suzman, and The Lake of Darkness starring Jerome Flynn. A total of fifty-five episodes featured Inspector Wexford, alongside his wife Dora (Louie Ramsay) and his assistant DI Mike Burden (Christopher Ravenscroft). A total of twenty-nine episodes focused on other characters. The first six series were released on VHS, but have never been released on DVD due to licensing rights issues with The Walt Disney Company, who owns Television South's back catalogue of programming. Series seven to twelve have since been released on DVD as a Best Of box set, omitting four episodes. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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