THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR OF THE MISCAST SLEUTH

 

I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie and having read all of her books several times over I watch any of the adaptations that are served up before me.

The Poirot series is a particular favorite because first and foremost David Suchet “is” Hercule Poirot to a Tee, secondly the attention to detail is exceptional and last of all every single adaptation has been set in the period Agatha Christie wrote them in.

So, when I first saw "Agatha Christies Marple" advertised I was very pleased and though not fully convinced that Geraldine McEwan was right for the role, the appetite was suitably wetted.

The first offering was “The Body in the Library”, with a subtitle of “based on the book by Agatha Christie”.

It always fills me with dread when I see the words "based on" under the title not for what it says but for what it does not and in this case my worst fears were soon realized.

Now I have become well accustomed to changes being made to original works when adapting them for television and film in fact it’s been done in the Poirot series to great effect without deviating from the essence of original text.

It was the opening scene of “The Body in the Library” which set the tone for the whole performance as far as I’m concerned having never occurred in the book, after all how could the family be affected by V2 rockets when the book was written two years before they were invented but then the production company had decided to set a book written in 1942 in the early fifties for no apparent reason at all.

Another odd thing was that in the book it was a simpleton who found the second body, but he was written out of the screenplay for some reason presumably because village idiots are not PC, then to cap it all they changed not only the motive but the culprit as well.

My main bone of contention about “The Body in the Library” is that it’s a cardinal sin as far as I am concerned when adapting any “who done it” to change the person who committed the crime.

This is fundamental you can change the place, the means and even at a pinch the motive but never ever the perpetrator.

There are somethings that you just cannot do after all even with the most popular works of literature such as those by Shakespeare there are things you would not do, for example you wouldn’t have an adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” with a happy ending.

The next offering was “A Murder is announced” which just had too many discrepancies to list.

Next came “Murder at the Vicarage” in which I think perhaps the most disturbing aspect was the portrayal of the young Miss Marple as the “bit on the side” of a married First World War army officer, talk about character assassination and if that wasn’t bad enough, they managed to turn all the sympathetic characters in the story into people I just couldn’t wait to become victims.

For example, one character, Mrs. Lester was played as a dreadful lush while in the book she was sympathetically portrayed as Mrs. Lestrange who was terminally ill and had returned to the village to be reunited with her daughter before she died.

The last helping of the first series or as I prefer to think of it the final weeks debacle otherwise called “4:50 From Paddington” which was clearly not based on the book at all.

Obviously the screenwriter just watched a video of the Margaret Rutherford film and wrote the screenplay accordingly.

Series two duly arrived with the rendition of “Sleeping Murder” which changed just about everything including plot, characters and motive “The Moving Finger” fared no better and even managed to make every single person completely detestable, I should just add that one of the parts was played by John Sessions and I tend to dislike any production with him in on principle.

The screen writers and production company really surpassed themselves with the last two films, I really do hope they are the last, “By the Pricking of My Thumbs”and “The Sittaford Mystery” neither of which were Miss Marple books.

If memory serves me well there were at least 12 Miss Marple novels and a further thirty short stories of which they have so far only murdered six of the novels so why on earth they have turned their attention on to mutilating the sixty plus books which did not feature Jane Marple I just do not know.

But I suppose my biggest complaint is in the casting of Geraldine McEwan in the title role, as good an actress as she might be and I have enjoyed her performance’s in the past such as “the prime of miss Jean Brodie”, “Mapp and Lucia”, the Barchester Chronicle's” to name but a few.

That having been said I should continue to say that being a good actor is not sufficient reason to play a part and this has been demonstrated in many productions.

As anyone who witnessed Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov trying and failing to portray Poirot will testify.

Now Geraldine McEwan is not the first and will I’m sure not be the last to be miscast as Miss M.

Margaret Rutherford the eccentric old Dame of British stage and screen was wonderful in a series of adaptation made in the sixties, but she was no more like Jane Marple than Bruce Willis is.

Helen Hayes was an American Actress, who people of my generation will remember from a series called “the Snoop Sisters”, who made a series of TV movies in the seventies but made no attempt to play the character.

Angel Lansbury was the next in the role and played the part exactly as she did Jessica Fletcher in the American hit series “Murder she wrote”. As a result, most Americans think Agatha Christie wrote the series.

It was the BBC, God bless them, who cast Joan Hickson in the role and she remains to this day the definitive Marple.

Sadly, or so the story goes she didn’t get to appear in as many of the Miss Marple stories as she should have done due to a very damaging technician’s strike at the BBC.

To my mind it is essential to get the person in the title role spot on otherwise whatever else you do in the production just wont gel.

It would of course help if Ms McEwan had made some effort at all to even look like the character, instead of a tall, thin, neatly dressed spinster with a pink, wrinkled face, pale blue eyes and white hair worn in an old-fashioned manner piled atop her head we have an untidy frump with Wurzel Gummidge hair and a leer like Benny Hill on viagra.   

I think it’s the inane grinning and the smugness in her portrayal, which grates on me the most.

I hope they don’t make anymore because if they do I will be duty bound to watch them for no other reason than to criticise them. 

I would hope the writers of the offending screenplay’s will hopefully return to writing daytime soaps for the Outer Mongolian broadcasting corporation after of course being horsewhipped.

Some useful tips either for those responsible for what we have so far been served up or any who might be thinking of doing so in the future.

Firstly, read the bloody book, or have someone read it to you, secondly watch the BBC adaptations with Joan Hickson and finally get the chap that does the Poirot adaptations to write them because he has obviously read the original works and has a fair idea of what’s required.