Could this be the start of a new trend toward greater optimism and positivity in the culture? HBO, for two decades the home of dark, unhappy, "edgy" TV series, is debuting a new show with a light touch.

HBO has announced that it has ordered 13 episodes of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The new series will be based on the series of mystery novels by Alexander MacCall Smith, which have been huge bestsellers in multiple countries. The series pilot will be a two-hour movie filmed in Botswana and directed and co-written by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain).

As the Washington Post reports,

Grammy-winning soul crooner Jill Scott stars as Precious Ramotswe, the sensible proprietor of the only female-owned detective agency in Botswana, in the two-hour "No. 1 Ladies’ " movie, which will serve as the series pilot. It was filmed on location in Botswana, directed by Oscar winner Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient") from a script by Minghella and Richard Curtis ("Four Weddings and a Funeral").

In an interview last year in the Christian Science Monitor, Scott said that when she saw the movie script "I thought, ‘Wow, a whole script with no sex, no violence, nothing that a child couldn’t watch. That’s really nice."

This sounds like a definite change from HBO’s programming choices of the past couple of decades, and is quite welcome, given that other networks tend to follow HBO’s lead.