The British Have Mystery of Whodunits Solved

Good evening, he’s Sherlock Holmes, and you’re not.

Sunday night’s marathon anniversary bash for NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” was a reminder of its influence on comedy during the last 25 years, as both a wildly uneven late-night franchise where genius surfaced occasionally and a seedling for feature films--mostly low brow--from its alumni.

Now comes another birthday worth celebrating.

Apologies to “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels, but nothing on television has been more fun than “Mystery!,” which Thursday night--with a fine, cerebral puzzler titled “Second Sight”--begins its 20th season on PBS, the nation’s foremost TV oasis for whodunits.

Actually, the Brits dunit.

Although the U.S. has its own fat archive of vibrant mystery writers, from the celebrated Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler through the moderns, only rarely have mysteries of quality been created for TV here (mention “Murder, She Wrote,” and you’re banished from the room).

Don’t expect anything soon from U.S. television matching “Second Sight,” where superior writing by Paula Milne, directing by Charles Beeson and acting by Clive Owen, Claire Skinner and Stuart Wilson converge in a twisty, suspenseful two-parter that finds a crackerjack London cop having great difficulty decoding the murder of a college student.

Why a problem for Det. Chief Inspector Ross Tanner (Owen), who isn’t quite his old take-charge self? It’s a hard case, complicated by two suspects, including the victim’s stepfather (Wilson), being identical twins. In addition, Tanner has a secret.

He’s losing his sight.

Catching on is his ambitious deputy, Det. Inspector Catherine Tully (Skinner), who agrees to keep mum and assist Tanner for a price, and soon they’re working as a tandem.

Her sight, his insight.

U.S. television has been largely myopic about the wondrous potential of mysteries. It’s the British who have made this milieu their own, planting the Union Jack on nearly two decades of “Mystery!” with exports ranging from Jeremy Brett’s fastidious, tightly coiled Holmes pacing his rooms at 221b Baker Street to Leo McKern’s amiable Horace Rumple, a self-described “Old Baily Hack” who rarely meets a judge as imposing as his wife.

Although rewarding, neither makes my “Mystery!” Top 10, which is as follows:

1. “Prime Suspect,” before being moved to “Masterpiece Theatre.” Starring Helen Mirren as abrasive, but strong, skilled and ultimately admirable Det. Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, an accomplished actress as a highly original character in a series ranking among TV’s best ever.

2. “Reilly: Ace of Spies.” Although “mystery” hardly fit this 1984 series, its antihero--real-life British agent Sidney Reilly--did, indeed, lurk mysteriously in the early years of this century. And Sam Neill’s portrayal captured in full Reilly’s reputed enigma and ruthlessness.

3. “Game, Set and Match.” More Cold War meltdown than classic mystery, and based on a trilogy of Len Deighton novels, it ran 13 exciting, engrossing hours in 1989, starring that grand actor for all occasions, Ian Holm, as a disillusioned British spy whiz whose loss of faith increases when his wife defects to the other side.

4. “A Dark Adapted Eye,” a superb adaptation of a disturbing “whydunit” by Ruth Rendell (writing under her Barbara Vine pseudonym) featuring a stunning performance by Celia Imre as a woman who is hanged for murdering her sister.

5. “Inspector Morse.” Colin Dexter created and John Thaw has played to perfection this erudite, boozing, morose, eternally teed-off, one-of-a-kind chief inspector whose purview includes his Oxford alma mater.

6. “Miss Marple.” The late Joan Hickson brought much more to this steely, tenacious, humorless spinster of an amateur sleuth (1986-89) than Agatha Christie gave her on the printed page. Although fragile looking, her brain was formidable, her observant blue eyes lasers, and on TV at least, she was a much more interesting character than Christie’s prissy Hercule Poirot.

7. “Mother Love,” a 1990 version of Domini Taylor’s novel noteworthy for Diana Rigg’s chilling reality as a possessive mom of unsurpassed villainy.

8. “Praying Mantis.” Come to think of it, Carmen Du Sautoy and Cherie Lunghi were just about as diabolical as rival male-devouring predators in this irresistible 1985 production.

9. “Die Kinder,” written by Milne. A father’s abduction of his two children in England found Miranda Richardson, as their mother, pursuing them to Germany, where her search intersected politics and haunting memories of terrorism, all of which made for fascinating viewing in 1991.

10. “Commander Adam Dalgliesh.” From 1985 to the present, Roy Marsden has masterfully embodied P.D. James’ cultured, inscrutable, humane but all-business poster boy for the new Scotland Yard. Dalgliesh is a straight arrow who makes other straight arrows look bent.

The coming “Second Sight” just misses making my Top 10, as Ross and Tully, whose delicate Ophelia looks belie her toughness, deal with both their sexual tensions and his growing visual impairment. Not only does he see less and less, but what he does see is mostly blurred or distorted, or even hallucinatory, hardly ideal for someone heading a murder investigation. And the suspense builds dramatically when we’re unable to distinguish reality and illusion in the superbly directed climactic final sequences.

Nor does the pleasure end here, for set to succeed “Second Sight” on the “Mystery!” stage are four more installments of Helen Baxendale as James’ feisty young detective, Cordelia Gray, in “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman,” followed by “Mystery!” host Diana Rigg herself as a colorful detective who is divorced in 1920s England in “The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries.”

Which--saving best things for last--is also the setting for “Clouds of Witness,” which is not available on “Mystery!” A recent video release from AcornMedia, it’s a Dorothy L. Sayers five-parter from the BBC that aired on “Masterpiece Theatre” in 1972.

It plays as intimately and effectively now as then, and I found myself popping in one cassette after another.

The hero, of course, grandly played by Ian Carmichael, is Sayers’ celebrated supersleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, a living, breathing, elegant monocle of a man and as much of a know-it-all as Holmes, but infinitely more likable.

At Lord Peter’s side as always is his valet/cook/mechanic/assistant sleuth Bunter (Glyn Houston), who was a sergeant under Capt. Wimsey in World War I. They are on holiday in Paris when learning that Lord Peter’s brother, the obscenely wealthy Duke of Denver, has been charged with murdering their fragile sister’s shady fiance at Riddlesdale Lodge. “It’s rather a good idea to keep one’s crimes in the family,” sniffs Sir Peter.

Soon he and Bunter are at the Duke’s estate, taking charge of the case and mixing amiably with well-heeled snobs with names like Marchbanks and Pettigrew-Robinson who sit around and harrumph about “socialism.”

The Wimsey who came to “Mystery!” in 1987 was based on a different set of Sayers stories and played by the younger Edward Petherbridge. For some of us, though, her crime dabbler most extraordinaire will always be Carmichael. No crust has ever been more upper, no sleuth more of a hoot.

* “Mystery!” returns for its 20th season on KCET Thursday at 9 p.m. with Part 1 of “Second Sight.” The network has rated it TV-14-LS (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for coarse language and sex).

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached by e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com.