I’ve been watching Foyle’s War, too! Yes, Christopher Foyle is one classy guy. I’m in season 4 now and the characters of Sam and Paul Milner are developing nicely. I’ll be checking out the other series recommended here too.
Going back, what about Ian McShane in Lovejoy?
I second the British show New Tricks, plus Hustle, which is about a band of con men with kind hearts and good intentions. Also The Mentalist, which has murders but very few car chases and other macho rubbish.
Another British show that is pretty tame (and mildly comical) is Murder in Suburbia. It is not as good as Lewis or Morse, or even Midsomer Murders, but it is passable (and the lead detective characters are female, if you care). Another low-violence one you might like is Wycliff.
Incidentally, although the bodies in Midsomer Murders can be a bit gruesome, I don’t think you often see much violence as it happens, and the actual detecting and arresting is very sedate. (Much more so than A Touch of Frost, which can sometimes get a bit violent.)
Incidentally, nearly all the British shows that have been mentioned are from our ITV (ad supported) network,* not the BBC (although they may sometimes run on BBC America). ITV seems to specialize in this sort of show these days, and although some are now quite old, they are often re-run here. In Britain, you can watch via the ITV Player web site. For UK residents, episodes that have recently been broadcast (even as re-runs) are available for free (“catch up”), with ads, and ones that have not been broadcast recently are available (without ads) for a very reasonable fee (like, 99p for a two hour episode). You will probably not be able to access the free stuff from an IP address outside the UK, but possibly, you may be able to get the paid stuff. (And it may be possible to fool them into letting you view the free stuff by using a suitable proxy or VPN.)
Not all the ITV detective shows are kind and gentle, however. For instance, DCI Banks is quite gritty.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
*Actually, it is not quite equivalent to an American network. ITV actually puts out (at least) four channels of TV now (as does the BBC, and some of the other, established “networks”, like Channel Four also broadcast multiple channels). I say “at least” four, because ITV not only has four channels of different programming, but also channels named things such as ITV 1+1, which runs the same programs as ITV 1, but an hour later. Math notwithstanding, ITV 1+1 is not equivalent to ITV 2. Channel Four, does something similar, as do some of the lesser “networks” such as Dave (yes, we have a TV “network” called Dave:rolleyes:). (The BBC does not do the +1 thing, however.)
I thought Father Brown had very clichéd scripts, and it utterly failed to capture the spirit of the Chesterton stories from which the character was derived (and whose plots were mostly very original, unlike those used in this TV version). Jonathan Creek is nicely done, if you like puzzle-plots that are like Agatha Christie on steroids.
A nice show I have just remembered, that recently had its its second series on the BBC, is Death in Paradise, set on a Caribbean island with a “fish out of water” English detective working with a crew of local detectives (one played by the guy who was the Cat in Red Dwarf). Very gentle, and played slightly for laughs (and sexual tension with the sergeant, who looks like a fashion model, but is a very down to earth character), with Agatha Christie style plots and denouements.
Good call. Leverage, the US equivalent of Hustle, would probably fit into the OP’s purview too.
Third series, actually. And I second this suggestion.
I do like Leverage. Learned about it right here on the SDMB.
Hamish Macbeth is brilliant Hamish Macbeth (TV Series 1995–1997) - IMDb
NCIS’ spinoff, NCIS: Los Angeles, is definitely more action-oriented than NCIS. You can always, ALWAYS count on the LA group getting into a gun battle about halfway through the episode, and again at the end.
I don’t know if they’ve been mentioned but the ‘kinder, gentler’ thing tends to point to Sunday night drama in the UK.
Two I think you would like are Jonathan Creek and Doc Martin, both very popular with overseas markets:
fwiw, both rate 8.3 on IMDB.
I doubt that a person that finds Inspector Morse unsavory would warm to Lovejoy.