In this London-based crime drama, a former police constable establishes a new career as a private investigator.
Having left the police force, Anna Lee (Imogen Stubbs) takes a job as a private investigator with Brierly Security. Under the occasionally exasperated watch of her boss, Commander Brierly (John Rowe), and alongside cynical colleague Bernie Schiller (Peter Wight), she tackles a variety of cases, from missing persons to corporate crime. Her off-duty life revolves around her flat in Coalville Square, where her neighbour, former wrestler Selwyn Price (Brian Glover), serves as a sounding board and source of unsolicited advice.
With a popular series of novels as its source and scripts from writers of the calibre of Andrew Davies and Anthony Horowitz, Anna Lee was positioned as a potential long-running franchise. The production, however, seemed uncertain of its identity from the start. A feature-length pilot, Headcase, was followed by a near-total recasting for the main series. The programme never resolved a central tension: its slick, metropolitan style, underscored by Anne Dudley’s jazz-inflected score, sat uneasily with the grittier tone of Liza Cody’s source material. The adaptation’s failure to capture the spirit of the books was so pronounced that Cody reportedly abandoned the character, bringing a premature end to the literary series as well as the televised one.
Broadcast: ITV – LWT, 1 Pilot + 5 Episodes, 10 January 1993 – 27 March 1994
Adapted from the novels of: Liza Cody
Writers: Andrew Davies, Anthony Horowitz, Douglas Watkinson, J. E. M. Brooks
Directors: Colin Bucksey, Christopher King, Peter Barber-Fleming
Producer: Brian Eastman
Music: Anne Dudley
Main Cast: Imogen Stubbs (Anna Lee), Brian Glover (Selwyn Price), John Rowe (Commander Brierly), Peter Wight (Bernie Schiller), Sonia Graham (Beryl Doyle), Wilbert Johnson (Stevie Johnson)
