McCall Smith defends Minghella

Alexander McCall Smith (pictured) has leapt to the defence of the late film director Anthony Minghella, calling the critics who panned his final work, a TV adaptation of McCall Smith's best-selling book The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, "perverse". Although the programme, set in Botswana, received some good reviews when it was broadcast in March, a number of critics loathed it. One called it "twee, quaint, shallow, possibly patronising". These comments were particularly hurtful to Minghella’s friends, family and admirers because the director, who also wrote the screenplay, had died only a few days before it was broadcast.

Speaking to an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival over the weekend, McCall Smith said: "I think it is a lovely and beautiful film and I was very distressed at some of the comments from people determined to put this film down because it wasn’t about dysfunctional pathologies," he said. "It was a celebration and Minghella absolutely correctly interpreted the nature of Botswana and reflected the whole thing. I was terribly upset when I saw what the critics said, but people will be perverse."

The BBC did not agree with the carpers, however. Rightly or wrongly, they have commissioned a 13-part series based on McCall Smith's books, using the same cast.