Odd couple on the job

Those tantalizingly mismatched Brits are back.

New Scotland Yard’s Lynley and Havers return to “Mystery!” in a case highlighting the class divide that helps make them such an oddly effective detective duo: a pleasure to watch even as they grate on each other.

“The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: Series II: Well Schooled in Murder,” airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on KCET, is the first of four Lynley stories slated for this season, all based on the Elizabeth George novels. “Well Schooled in Murder” was directed by Robert Young and adapted by Simon Block.

The investigation starts as a missing student case, with the aristocratic Inspector Thomas Lynley (Nathaniel Parker, “Far From the Madding Crowd”) summoned to Bredgar Hall, an elite boarding school much like the one he once attended. He is called there as a personal favor to the boy’s secretive housemaster, John Corntel (John Sessions), who happens to be Lynley’s old school chum.

Lynley brings his partner, the curmudgeonly, working-class Det. Sgt. Barbara Havers (Sharon Small, “About a Boy”), knowing she will cut through the school’s smokescreen of pretense and tradition.

She doesn’t disappoint. When the boy’s dead body is discovered and one of Bredgar’s snooty bigwigs calls it “a great setback for the school,” Havers snaps back, “not to mention the boy.” Throughout the episode, Havers helps cover Lynley’s blind spots in a case that hits him too close to home, cleverly playing bad cop to his good cop.

As their focus shifts to a cabal of older students, the mystery itself turns out to be a tad predictable. But the joy in these shows comes from that peculiar English wit, the irrepressible hot and cold chemistry between Lynley and Havers, and the rain-soaked atmosphere.

Later this season, murder cases will take the sleuths to a Scottish estate, Cambridge University and a scenic but sinister Lancashire village. That’s surely bad news for evil doers, but good news for us.