Heat of the Sun

Colonial Kenya provides an exotic, fascinating backdrop for this excellent PBS Mystery series. Heat of the Sun is what I call the "kitchen sink" approach to detective fiction, with every crime imaginable--from murder, arson, and drug-running, to blackmail, banditry, and slave trading--perpetrated under the hot African sun. The excellent acting, the palpable romantic chemistry between the two main characters, the hypnotic setting, and the clever, convoluted plots, all combined to make this a memorable viewing experience. Hopefully, we'll be seeing the continuing adventures of Superintendent Tyburn, Emma Fitzgerald, and company, before too long!!

This series mixes genres and conventions in a most enjoyable way. It has elements of police procedural, hard-boiled detective story, historical mystery, and colonial soap opera. Trevor Eve is fun to watch as Tyburn, the tough, incorruptible British cop who is both repelled and amused by British society in 1930s Nairobi, Kenya, while refusing to become enmeshed in its racism and decadence. The lovely Susannah Harker is under-used as his aviatrix girl friend. The rest of the supporting cast is highly effective. I am not an expert on the period, but the stories give a good flavor of life as it was lived in that place and time.

From every aspect this programme is tremendous. I am mesmerized whilst watching and sad when it ends. The attitudes of social stature are clearly portrayed. I find this highly enjoyable.

It is hard for me to think of a TV program which I considered to have finished at the right time, the majority no matter how good they are out stay their welcome, while a few go too quickly. However I can honestly say that Heat of the Sun is the most depressing example of the later I have come across in a long time.

This series has its faults: Historical and continuity inaccuracies that only the nick picking would notice, an over sentimental last episode and a few wayward performances. But at its heart this is a decently written and well acted period detective drama. Not only that, compared to almost all of British television's recent detective dramas it is refreshing, both in its unique period setting and the fact that it's detective is for all intense purposes mentally stable.

And so it is for the above reasons that I believe this series deserved more than three episodes. It had places to go and stories still to tell and it is just another example of some of the poor decision making that has been going on at ITV over the last couple of decades! For at the end of the day Waking the Dead is a great series (as to lesser extents so are some of its ITV replicas) but I would have much preferred to have swap a few series of Boyd for a handful or so more episodes of Tyburn and this forgotten and under-appreciated gem of a show.

This was a great series - Trevor Eve played the part of Superintendent Tyburn with a wry subtlety that fit the part. Having lived in Kenya myself when I was growing up, it was easy to relate to the foreigner in another country who does not fit into his "home" society anymore, but will never be African either. I can not comment on costume inconsistencies or period setting mistakes (one comment mentioned a 1939 rifle in 1933), but these do not detract particularly from what is essentially a mystery novel on DVD. As for the idea of "nazis" in 1933 Kenya, I think other comments may be jumping to conclusion. Tyburn was following leads to drug smugglers, if I recall correctly, and Germans in East Africa would not have been unheard of, considering that Tanzania was, at one point, a German colony (I believe Queen Victoria once gave Mt. Kilimanjaro to the Kaiser for his birthday, hence the strange "jog" in what is otherwise a straight line border between Kenya and Tanzania).