Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: Complete Fourth Series DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Most grannies spend their time baking cookies, knitting scarves, and cultivating prize-winning roses. That kind of sedentary life has no appeal to Hetty Wainthropp (Keeping Up Appearances' Patricia Routledge). Instead, she opened a detective agency, solving crimes with the help of her husband Robert (Derek Benfield, Rumpole of the Bailey) and her assistant Geoffrey (Dominic Monaghan, Lost). This isn't merely a hobby. She's so good that she has even earned the respect of Detective Chief Inspector Adams (John Graham-Davies).
The fourth series begins with Hetty and Robert returning from an extended vacation in Australia, where they visited their beloved son and his family. The trip obviously agreed with them, because series four is Hetty Wainthropp Investigates' strongest yet.
The mysteries are still a little bland and clichéd, but Hetty's undercover shenanigans are more believable this time around. It's easy to buy her as a writer doing research for a book on miners' wives, and this guise allows her to naturally question suspects ("Something to Treasure"). In the past, the show's writers would have just as easily set her up in a ridiculous disguise - a Swiss milk maid, say - and still have everyone around Hetty accept her for what she claimed to be. Series four also finds humor by having Robert and Geoffrey go undercover as a wealthy wheelchair-bound South African and his trusty chauffer.
The characters also undergo personal changes in a series of (semi-) engrossing subplots. Geoffrey continues to mature. When his romance with Janet (Suzanne Maddock) grows, he's soon considering whether or not he should move in with her. Robert isn't as bitter and peeved as he was in previous series. He doesn't participate much in the mysteries this time around. Instead, he spends his time weed-whacking the neighborhood and the local cemetery. He also gets a job as a writer for a local paper even though he doesn't even have the vaguest idea of how journalists go about doing their work. For example, he writes a huge exposé about a supposedly crooked home improvement company, but neglects to do any research beyond listening to the complaints of two customers.
Even with improvements, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates is far from perfect. The first three episodes are stronger than the final three. Still, the quality is high enough that viewers won't feel as guilty watching this guilty pleasure.
Hetty investigates six cases in series four:
Something to Treasure: Hetty and Geoffrey help a miner's widow search for a book her husband was working on at the time of his death - a book that might contain the key to a secret stash of precious minerals.
Family Values: Hetty investigates the suspicious death of a wealthy man who may have been murdered by his housekeeper.
Digging for Dirt: An old woman barricades herself inside her rundown apartment so that an investigation might be conducted into its shoddy construction before the building - and the evidence - is torn down and rebuilt by the same construction company.
Mind Over Muscle: When a friend's husband is brutally attacked in a pub bathroom, Hetty investigates whether it was a random attack or whether the man provoked it.
Blood Relations: Hetty is reunited with her long-lost cousin, but their happy reunion is short-lived when the sleuth stumbles across a criminal plot.
For Love Nor Money: It's up to Hetty and Geoffrey to figure out what happened to a living history museum employee who disappears - in costume, no less - after her first day at work.
The six episodes that make up Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: Complete Fourth Series are divided onto three discs. The discs are housed in three standard-sized keepcases which slide into a cardboard slipcover. The back of each keepcase includes brief synopses of the episodes found on the DVDs.
The static menus are simple and functional. Viewers can choose to watch an entire episode or can jump directly to a scene using the "Scene Selection" menu.
