'C.B. Strike' Is This Month's Best British Mystery, But It's On Cinemax

With C.B. Strike, J.K. Rowling brings a new voice to British mysteries and a little bit of Harry Potter magic. Under normal circumstances, C.B. Strike would be premiering on PBS’ Masterpiece this weekend, the long-running home for BBC and ITV drama, romances, and mysteries, which provides these series with an already-built-in fan base. It's a BBC import which aired opposite Victoria last fall, under the slightly shorter title, Strike.  Written by middling range author Robert Galbraith, who has an oddly large twitter following, the show would slot nicely into the neighborhood. Less star-studded, yet more celebrity-obsessed than Unforgotten, not as concerned with morality as Granchester, and far more straightforward in its twists than Endeavour, C.B. Strike is a perfectly delightful mini-series coming all three of the existing books.

Except these aren’t normal circumstances. Robert Galbraith doesn’t exist. He’s the pen name of Joanne Rowling, the billionaire with a household name recognized the world over, which is why HBO sunk money into the series and the rights to air it over here. C.B. Strike is airing on its secondary tier pay cable channel, Cinemax.

Rowling’s story is as Cinderella level as it is well known: a single mum living on the dole, she wrote the first Harry Potter book in coffee shops. The series, aimed towards tween and then teen crowd was a hit from the word go, kicking off an entire YA craze that still hasn't abated two decades later. By the time the final novel arrived in stores in 2007, Rowling never had to work again. There was one problem: Rowling wanted to work, but her name was getting in the way. So she sent out the first Cormoran Strike mystery manuscript under the pen name Galbraith, in hopes publishers would be fooled. Clearly, enough were: "Galbraith" received a collection of rejections that a post-Potter "Rowling" never would.