Hetty Is Not Quite Herself in Four Undercover Investigations on MYSTERY!
Hetty Wainthropp is certainly the most unusual of the series' detectives: Armed with little more than her pocketbook and her prodigious common sense, the Lancashire housewife-turned-gumshoe has proved that she can easily match wits with the best of them–even if she has to take the bus to get to the scene of the crime.
Starring the redoubtable Patricia Routledge (Keeping Up Appearances) in the title role, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates returns with four beguiling new cases.
In this new round of adventures, Hetty goes undercover in four wildly different roles, demonstrating her continued fearlessness in the face of criminal offenses (and providing an acting field day for Ms. Routledge). Still by Hetty's side are her recently retired husband Robert (Derek Benfield) and Geoffrey Shawcross (Dominic Monaghan), a 17-year-old ex-shoplifter who now lives with the Wainthropps–reawakening their dormant parenting skills–and who plays a scrappy Dr. Watson to Hetty's Mrs. Holmes.
Hetty's first case, Poison Pen, finds the fledgling Wainthropp Detective Agency suddenly suffering from growing pains–"We've become too successful–that's the problem," Hetty complains. With new job offers pouring in, Hetty finally settles on a case proffered by Helga Allowby (Sue Johnston), a reclusive older woman accused of sending noxious "poison pen" letters to the residents of her village–and who wants Hetty to prove her innocence. The letters, which threaten to expose villagers' darkest secrets, have already sent one couple packing, and are the root cause of the local schoolmaster's attempted suicide. Hoping to penetrate the mistrust that pervades the village, Hetty goes undercover as Tara "Rocks are M' Specialty" Hall, a footloose painter. But when she receives her own "poison pen" letters, Hetty begins to suspect her employer is either holding out on her–or, in fact, holding the pen.
The Astral Plane takes Hetty on a mystical journey to the spirit world when she investigates Mrs. Maurika Rome (Kate Layden), a spiritualist who is suspected of using séances–and blackmail–to prey on the savings of the recently widowed. A completely skeptical Hetty goes undercover as Mrs. Lola Hattersley, inventing an imaginary late husband whom she wishes to contact. When some of the medium's predictions later seem to come true, Hetty begins to wonder if Mrs. Rome isn't the real thing. That is, until "Mr. Hattersley's" illegitimate daughter shows up demanding money. The case seems well in hand until Geoffrey's secret romance with Mrs. Rome's daughter Sara (Tabitha Wady) threatens to compromise the medium's arrest–and nearly causes him to quit the agency.
A Rose By Any Other Name would smell as sweet, except that the rose in question is Lester Rose (Ronald Pickup), a middle-aged photographer who specializes in glamour shots of wealthy women of a certain age. The children of well-to-do widow Gillian Snape (Janet Hargreaves), Lester's fiancée, worry that he also specializes in marrying for money, and they hire Hetty to investigate Rose's past. Hetty and Geoffrey quickly develop an unflattering portrait of Rose as a gambler, a gigolo, and a man of ever-shifting identities. Should they stop the wedding? While surprising facts revealed by two women from his past–and Hetty's undercover visit to his studio–expose a slightly less-thorny side to the man, Geoffrey digs up one last clue that gives the team pause.
In Woman of the Year, Hetty takes a tumble down the hall stairs as she rushes out to be honored as one of the "Midlands Women of the Year." The unfortunate, resulting bruise on her face turns out to be fortuitously timed: Detective Chief Inspector Adams (John Graham Davies) taps Hetty for an undercover assignment in a shelter for abused women. Adams and the shelter's head suspect an insider of leaking the shelter's confidential location to an abusive husband who later confronts his estranged wife–with deadly results: she runs into traffic in an effort to escape him and is killed instantly. Hetty's quest to find the leak not only opens her eyes to the terrifying realities of spousal abuse, but results in a gripping conclusion as she leads the residents in defending their refuge when its security is breached by a motorcycle gang.
Introduction | More | Episode Descriptions
| Cast and Production Credits
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