Veronica Clare

........for these three reasons:

(a) A Veronica-Lake lead character with a heart. (b) Cases were solved without violence or machine guns. (c) And ..... she owned a jazz club. Game-set-and-match.

The early episodes were uneven, I'll admit that. And one commentary elsewhere - that much of the detective work was done by secondary-role men - had some validity, yet if the show had caught on, few would have noticed. All-in-all, no flaws that could not have been fixed along the way. Indeed, the show would have changed organically, anyhow.

Lifetime heavily promoted this show for a very short time; seems strange that they cut the umbilical cord after so short a time. Sure wish that one of the major networks had picked up this ball and ran with it.

Well, we can hope that this will be released someday, can't we?

Veronica Clare seems to have been written and produced with the objective of reflecting the Forties Film Noir genre, but not as a slavish copy; more as a deliberate application of 1990's film culture to the Film Noir idea. It achieved this with great subtlety. It also had atmosphere, pace and style - all reinforced by the quality of the acting of Laura Robinson and Robert Beltran. The whole package was strangely attractive and addictive; an example, perhaps, of an excellent series which inexplicably failed to achieve wide popularity. Nevertheless, it may achieve cult status in the future. One hopes that it will soon be available on DVD.