Nathaniel Parker plays the 8th Earl of Asherton, a Scotland Yard detective whose silver Bentley and Eton vowels irritate his partner Sharon Small's scruffy, working-class DS Barbara Havers. Together they unpick murders among the English gentry, each 90-minute film pushing their uneasy alliance to snapping point when privilege collides with Havers' blunt realism. From Yorkshire barns to Cornish smuggling coves, the camera luxuriates in manor houses and drizzle-soaked streets while the pair trade barbed class jokes that sting more than the handcuffs.
The BBC axed the show in 2007 after six series and 24 episodes, despite viewer petitions and respectable ratings that hovered around six million. Early episodes lifted plots from Elizabeth George's novels, then writers invented new crimes once the books ran out, keeping the core tension: Lynley's nobility is both key and obstacle, Havers' council-estate instincts both crucial and embarrassing. Three actresses played Lynley's wife Helen, the role recast as marriage turned from flirtation to tragedy.
Each case is essentially a country-house mystery updated for modern Britain, the murders exposing sexual hypocrisy, racist policing, press corruption. The final episode left Lynley drowning grief in whisky after Helen's death, Havers quietly picking up the pieces. American audiences saw it retitled on PBS Mystery!, Diana Rigg introducing the Earl who never actually drove the promised Bentley.
Production Details
BBC One / 6 Seasons / 22 Episodes / 2002
Created by: Elizabeth George
Writer(s): Ed Whitmore, Peter Jukes, Kate Wood
Producer(s): Ruth Baumgarten
Main Cast
Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Thomas Lynley
Sharon Small as Sergeant Barbara Havers
Lesley Vickerage as Helen Clyde
Paul Hickey as Lafferty
Shaun Parkes as DC Winston Nkata
Catherine Russell as Helen Lynley
Gabrielle Drake as Lady Asherton
Matilda Ziegler as Christine Miller
Honeysuckle Weeks as Tania Thompson
James D'Arcy as Guy Thompson
Kate Miles as Kate Myers
Nicholas Gecks as Mike Thompson
