Search - Hetty Wainthropp - Missing Persons on DVD

Pleasant, But Not Particularly Engrossing

C. O. DeRiemer | San Antonio, Texas, USA | 04/20/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Hetty Wainthropp is a popular sleuth from British television who has shown up on PBS now and then. She's played by Patricia Routledge as a practical, no-nonsense woman with a sense of humor who got in the sleuthing game when her husband retired and she decided she could solve a mystery as well as the next person and make a little extra money doing it. The series started in 1996. This is the pilot. It was made in 1990 and wasn't picked up. It took six years before people figured out how to make the show work. This pilot, unfortunately, sort of demonstrates why the powers passed the first time.

Hetty is reluctantly asked to find the lost son of her best friend's husband. He'd been married once before. She does so by being smart and persistent, but then she's asked by the son to find his son, a 16-year old who has gone missing. Eventually she does, but only after some adventures.

Unfortunately, the mystery is much less a mystery than a family drama. Much time is spent on the characters' past. A good deal of time at the end is spent with Hetty trying to bring back some spirit to her best friend after the husband dies of a stroke. By the end of the program the grandson is going to work with Hetty on more cases and Hetty's husband is starting to complain about all the frozen meals she leaves him while she's out sleuthing.

Patricia Routledge is great in breathing character and interest into Hetty. It's the story itself that just doesn't have a lot of energy. Still, it was fun to see how Hetty got her start and to compare the changes that were made between this pilot and, six years later, the series."

Not as enjoyable as the series.

St. Ananas | Twin Cities, MN United States | 04/16/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This movie was made years before the series (perhaps while Patricia Routledge was doing Keeping Up Appearances). It tells a slightly different, and more fleshed-out version of how Hetty got into detective work. It is a different supporting cast, and I missed Dominic Monaghan as Geoffrey. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. If you are a Hetty fan I suggest you rent it."

Disappointing

D. Flanders | San Diego, CA | 09/30/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I love the Hetty Wainthropp series, but this DVD was disappointing. There wasn't much mystery, and it was missing Geoffrey, and a different actor played Robert; I agree with another reviewer, there was no chemistry between the characters such as what you find in the series. I was very excited when I received it, I wanted to introduce a couple of my friends to Hetty, but they were unimpressed. I wished afterwards that I had shown them the first DVD of Series 1 instead."