| Genre: | Crime drama |
| Creator: | Reginald Hill |
| Director: | Sandy Johnson |
| Starring: | Gareth Hale Norman Pace Christopher Fairbank Freddie Jones John McGlynn Malcolm Storry John Woodvine |
| Composer: | John E. Keane |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Num Series: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 3 |
| List Episodes: |
|
| Executive Producer: | Keith Richardson |
| Producer: | Emma Hayter |
| Editor: | Janey Walklin |
| Cinematography: | Sean Van Hales |
| Runtime: | 50 minutes |
| Company: | Yorkshire Television |
| Channel: | ITV |
A Pinch of Snuff is a British television crime drama miniseries, consisting of three fifty-minute episodes, that broadcast on ITV network from 9 to 23 April 1994.[1] The series, adapted from the 1978 novel of the same name by author Reginald Hill, was the first Dalziel and Pascoe adaptation for TV, arriving two years before the more widely known BBC adaptation that followed in 1996. In this miniseries, the characters of Dalziel and Pascoe were played by comedians Gareth Hale and Norman Pace, with Christopher Fairbank as loyal sidekick Edgar Wield, and Malcolm Storry as Insp. Ray Crabtree.[2]
The series broadcast over three consecutive Saturday nights, from 9 April 1994. Reginald Hill was said to have been unhappy with the series, and so prevented ITV from creating any further adaptations for television. The Independent went on to describe the "critical contempt heaped on the first television version" of the legendary characters. It described how "a complex story of pornography and murder was turned into a vehicle for the dramatic talents of Hale and Pace, by common consent breathtakingly miscast as the chalk-and-cheese Yorkshire coppers. While either of them might conceivably have scraped by as the blunt, earthy Dalziel, it's hard to see how anybody could have imagined one of them playing the sensitive, intellectual Pascoe".[3]
BBC Worldwide subsequently approached Hill with a view to creating a new TV adaptation, to which Hill agreed. Actors Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan were subsequently cast in the roles of Dalziel and Pascoe, and between 16 March 1996 and 22 June 2007, eleven series consisting of both novel adaptations and original stories were produced.[4]