Hetty Wainthrop Investigates

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates
Series titles. The background is formed from multiple "photographs".
Genre	Cozy Crime
Created by	David Cook
Starring	Patricia Routledge Derek Benfield Dominic Monaghan John Graham Davies Suzanne Maddock Frank Mills
Composer(s)	Nigel Hess
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	4
No. of episodes	Pilot + 27 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Michael Wearing
Producer(s)	Carol Parks
Running time	60 minutes (per episode)
Release
Original network	ITV (pilot)/BBC1
Original release	3 January 1996 – 4 September 1998

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates is a British cosy crime television programme that aired four series between 1996 and 1998 on BBC One.

Patricia Routledge starred as the title character, Henrietta "Hetty" Wainthropp,Derek Benfield as her patient husband Robert, Dominic Monaghan as her assistant and lodger Geoffrey Shawcross, and John Graham Davies as DCI Adams. Later episodes include Suzanne Maddock as Janet Frazer, a feisty young auto mechanic and Frank Mills as Robert's brother Frank.

In the United States, episodes have been featured on PBS's anthology programme Mystery!.

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates is based on characters from the novel Missing Persons (1986) by David Cook, who co-wrote the episodes with John Griffith Bowen. The incidents in Cook's novel were inspired by his own mother's experiences. Prior to the pilot going into production, Patricia Routledge read the story Missing Persons for BBC Radio 4's A Book At Bedtime in February 1987.

In 1990 ITV broadcast a feature-length pilot, Missing Persons, featuring Tony Melody as Robert Wainthropp and Garry Halliday as Geoffrey Shawcross, but ITV opted not to pursue a series. The storyline of this episode is ignored in the subsequent BBC series, with the first episode establishing Hetty as a detective in her first case and meeting Geoffrey for the first time. The characterization of Hetty was altered considerably for the series from the pilot. The 'original' Hetty was blonde and far more 'theatrical' in her manner. Additionally, the pilot character lived in considerably better circumstances than the home seen in the series.