Heat of the Sun

What a wonderful series concept! A streetwise, professional Scotland Yard detective is exiled to decadent Nairobi colonial society in 1931, and charged with enforcing rules among people who have fled England specifically to avoid them. Before he's even started his first day, the tough but idealistic Superintendent Tyburn has managed to subdue three abusive, upper class drunks and haul them to jail on the back of his luggage wagon, only to find that one of them is the nephew of the governor. And that's just the beginning...

Heat of the Sun displays the wonderful British acting and production values that make public television viewers so spoiled. The art direction and costuming are excellent, truly capturing a sense of Kenya in the 1930's, and the actors nail their parts down, especially Trevor Eve as Superintendent Tyburn and Susannah Harker as the independent bush pilot Emma Fitzgerald.

Unfortunately, the production is hobbled by uneven writing and directing, which may help account for why the series never continued beyond three 2-hour stories. The writers introduce far too much plot and not enough character. People talk about themselves instead of showing who they are. In a glorious atmosphere like this one, I want to know more about these people and how they came here - the flaming homosexual, the literate African constable, the Jewish doctor and the Sikh forensics expert - but the script rarely gives more than a shallow glimpse before bolting on to the next plot twist. As a result, the stories often feel flat, like cardboard characters are marching through a mystery novel.

Some of the directors need to go back to film school. The first episode shows no sense of shot size or angle; people are framed way too tightly and the camera often swirls around Tyburn even when someone else is speaking. Shots don't flow together because actors are looking at slightly different angles to the camera. And so on.

But on the whole, the great sense of atmosphere manages to carry this series far above the mundane. I really hope to see a sequel; just nail down the details next time, and this series could be a classic.

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).

Acting, directing, and writing are all fine. It's mysteries set in 30's Africa, and uses many of the conventions of films of the time, but from a modern perspective - not unlike the approach taken in Indiana Jones - and it generally works well.

I'm usually the first one to quibble about technical errors, but this series was sooo well done that I never noticed any of the ones noted in other reviews here. Mind you, I had a hard time with Valentine shooting guns out of people's hands, and with a flaming homosexual in that time and place, but I just let the excellent story telling carry things along. Somehow, it seemed ** right ** that Valentine was able to shoot guns out of people's hands, and that there were Nazis lurking, etc.

One of the most enjoyable things on TV in a long time, and I hope there will be more. Let's have a DVD soon, please.

This is a terrific series. You totally loose yourself in the times, location; the characters are all too real; you only want it to continue.

The acting has so much depth;one has to believe and hope there may be a sequel. I thought the story lines blended well together; the script was tight; if you left for a second, you missed key dialogue. Happy Valley was an "anything goes" society so characters like DeVille, Hans Dietrick Gessler (it was never implied that he was a Nazi), and Daphne's affair are hardly surprising. As for the insignia on the plane, British and Kenyan planes had different registration schemes; I don't know if this was accurately portrayed. All in all 10 stars.