Mr Marple is an unlikely sleuth. Agatha Christie’s bestselling detective is a geriatric spinster who looks all fluffy, pink, and helpless. But Jane Marple has a shrewd, logical mind. Her ability to draw parallels, between the characters who inhabit her world in the little village of St Mary Mead and outside, to see patterns in human behaviour, is what enables her to solve the most complicated murders. A series of Scotland Yard chiefs know that listening to her, even when she is dithering, leads to results.
The analogy is not perfect. But that roughly is what can be said for TV