Fry prods gently at village goings-on

There's becoming quite a bit of Fry and Laurie back on the telly these days.

Hugh Laurie, of course, is the hobbling, acid-tongued star of the medical drama House, which has just wrapped up another series on TV3. Stephen Fry - his comedic partner of many years through the hit sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie - has also turned up in a quite different guise, as small-town solicitor with a humanitarian touch in the new comedy-drama Kingdom (TV One, 8.30pm Saturdays).

Like Laurie, Fry plays a rather eccentric character, but there any similarities end. Where Dr Gregory House's specialty seems to be insulting his patients, Peter Kingdom is a lawyer with a big heart who thinks human issues are more important than his profession (if that's not too charitable a word these days for the legal fraternity).

Love or loathe him, you have to admire Fry for his cleverness and also his versatility, whether on myriad comedy panel shows (those endless programmes of the ilk of Just a Minute or I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, perhaps best described as an acquired taste), as Lord and General Melchett in several series of the hugely popular Blackadder, or as a novelist or film director.

Though he has been popping up on Bones from time to time, Kingdom looks to be quite a turn again for Fry, who doubles as executive producer of the six-parter. Here he follows in the footsteps of Martin Clunes and Dawn French, and no doubt assorted other British actors, with a series set in a picturesque village full of odd but mostly loveable and unthreatening characters. Fry's fictional village is in Norfolk, which also happens to be where he lives in real life: he says he wanted to give televiewers "a glimpse of the locations I love".

Kingdom is also the vehicle for an impressive supporting cast, from Hermione Norris (Cold Feet) as his fresh-out-of-rehab half sister, Beatrice, to Celia Imrie (Calendar Girls) as his mothering receptionist Gloria, and Karl Davies as his enterprising law clerk Lyle. Then there's Tony Slattery - like Fry, a regular from Whose Line Is It Anyway? - who plays litigious but none-too-fastidious villager Sidney Snell.

Snell's smell precedes him in similar measure to his reputation for being a pest, but in episode one Peter is surprised to realise his annoying client does, indeed, have a case. Pockets of land Snell has acquired about the village promise to thwart cold-hearted development (a carpark, initially) that has no regard for the quaint and historic surrounds.

In parallel storylines, there's a will to be sorted for a greedy son after a supposedly wealthy widow dies in the company of a young male escort - it turns out she was penniless after giving away her fortune to an institution caring for her intellectually handicapped daughter, who no one knew about - and Kingdom has his hands and house full after the loopy Beatrice turns up unannounced on the doorstep for what looks a depressingly long stay.

There's also the small issue of the mysterious disappearance and suspected death of Kingdom's brother: the series opens with Peter picking up Simon's personal effects from the local police station, and you get the impression this is far from the end of the matter.

It's all rather a lot to fit in for a man who's also been busy recently completing the last of the Harry Potter audiobooks - Fry was supposed to be one of only five people worldwide who knew the ending of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows before it went on sale, but that was before the internet leaks - and the script for Peter Jackson's remake of The Dam Busters. But they say you should give a job to a busy person if you want it done well, and this quirky new series looks unlikely to bomb.

- © Fairfax NZ News