6.8 /10 1 Votes
7/10 TV Country of origin United Kingdom Final episode date 11 October 2000 | 6.8/10 IMDb First episode date 2 August 1987 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Also known as 'The Inspector Wexford Mysteries' Starring George BakerLouie RamsayChristopher RavenscroftKen KitsonDiane KeenJohn Burgess Similar A Touch of Frost, Blue Murder, The Trials of Jimmy Rose, London's Burning, Only When I Laugh | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Ruth Rendell Mysteries is a British television crime drama series, produced by TVS and Meridian Broadcasting, in association with Blue Heaven productions, for broadcast on ITV. Twelve series were broadcast between 2 August 1987, and 11 October 2000. Created by renowned author Ruth Rendell, the first six series focused entirely on Rendell's main literary character Inspector Reg Wexford, played by George Baker. Repeat airings of these series change the programme's title to The Inspector Wexford Mysteries. However, later series shifted focus onto other short stories previously written by Rendell, with Wexford only featuring in three further stories, in 1996, 1998 and 2000 respectively. When broadcast, these three stories were broadcast under the title Inspector Wexford.
Contents
In some cases, stories were expanded from Rendell's original material or elements from a number of stories were woven together into one episode. A smaller number of episodes were based on Rendell's full-length novels, such as The Strawberry Tree starring Simon Ward, Going Wrong starring James Callis, A Case of Coincidence starring Keith Barron and Ronald Pickup, Front Seat starring Janet Suzman and The Lake of Darkness starring Jerome Flynn. An overall total of fifty-five episodes featured Inspector Wexford, alongside his wife Dora (Louie Ramsay) and sidekick D.I. Mike Burden (Christopher Ravenscroft). A total of twenty-nine episodes focused on other characters.
The first six series were released on VHS, but have never been released on DVD due to an issue with Television South's licensing rights, which affects most of their back catalogue of programming. Series seven to twelve have since been released on DVD as a Best Of box set, omitting four episodes.
Cast
Series 6 (1992)
This was the last series to solely feature Inspector Wexford. Subsequent series shifted focus onto other characters previously featured in short stories by Rendell.
Series 7 (1992-1994)
This series was the first series not to feature Inspector Wexford, with focus being shifted to other leading characters from Rendell's repertoire of short stories.
Media releases
The first six series were released on VHS on 21 January 2000 via IMC Vision. This was shortly before the rights to Television South were purchased by ABC Family Worldwide, which has subsequently lead to all other TVS programmes being unavailable for commercial release on VHS on DVD. Subsequently, the remaining six series were released on DVD on 9 April 2007, as The Best Of Ruth Rendell Mysteries, via Network. As these series were not produced by TVS, the licensing rights became available for a DVD release. However, four episodes were omitted ("Heartstones", "The Strawberry Tree", "Thornapple" and "Talking to Strange Men"), none of which have ever been commercially released. Again, the remaining six series were released on DVD in the United States on 24 June 2008. Series seven-twelve have since been repeated on ITV3 and ITV Encore, however, once again the four episodes omitted from the DVD were not broadcast, suggesting that the licensing rights for these episodes are no longer available.