Murder Is Easy

Agatha Christie wrote many dozens of murder mysteries, some famously ingenious; but either 'Murder is Easy' was a dud, or this adapatation is badly screwed up. People start dying in a small English village, but everyone still alive is remarkably unperturbed and several seem not to care if they're suspected to be the killer. Eventually, the real culprit is unearthed, and explains exactly how they've done it, although our amateur detective hero has identified the villain without in fact piecing any of it together for themselves. I've seen Christie adaptations that were fun, preposterous, or anachronistic; but none as anemic as this.

Firstly I'm a big fan of the whodunit period drama. From Miss Marple to Poirot etc. When I saw this advertised on the BBC over the Christmas period I was hoping for a good watch.

This starts off intriguing with Miss Pinkerton boarding a train, making her way to Scotland Yard. On the train, she meets Luke Fitzwilliam, whom she tells her tale of a murderer in her village. Fitzwilliam, an investigator himself, who is frustrated at a delay in starting his new job and so goes to Miss Pinkerton's village to investigate her claims.

To be honest, I found this one a bit boring. The way it played out and was acted it almost felt like a parody of Agatha Christie rather than a serious drama.

Although David Jonsson carried the lead well enough it didn't really suit the story to have Fitzwilliam's character changed to Nigerian. It made it difficult to believe the setting where the story takes place and that it was 1950s Britain.

I would recommend spending two hours doing something better than watching this. There are much better adaptations of Agatha Christie's work than this and time would be better spent watching them. Sadly yet again another Christmas and another sub par BBC adaptation.

I love to watch BBC crime series. Most of them are excellent. The lesser ones are still of a good standard.

Murder Is Easy is well below standard. So much so I was hesitant at first, feeling I was missing some hidden point.

I endured the dreadful acting. David Jonsson looks like he's been eating lemons. Then there's the dreadful timing, robbing the already sluggish story of all suspense.

To top it off, the camera work is wooden and awkward. Everything looks like it has been filmed on a theatre stage.

Finally, the makers insist on emphasising the bigotry of the era in a haphazard way. It becomes irritating when Jonsson breaks protocol and is meekly insulted or discriminated. He never stops smirking.

The only mystery here is how on earth this series was allowed to see the light of day.

Agatha Christie has a chequered history with Tv and Film adaptations, from early Poirot characterisations that made him French, yes French. Margaret Rutherford was a fun but hardly faithful to the source Miss Marple. The recent ITV adaptations of Marple have played fast a loose with the narratives and even changed murderers at points. So, it's true to say that adapting Christie can be fraught with difficulty when it appears 'easy'.

This adaptation was a mess on many levels. From a sub Wes Anderson approach to texture and editing rhythm, strange close ups, wobbly camera work and a script that clanked along pouring exposition on top of the imposition of a post-colonial narrative - it just didn't mesh.

The ideas were bold, and in many ways could have been brilliant, just so many choices at once going away from the source material began to stress the story so much that it became vague and confused, an original piece about colonial attitudes in the 20th Century or a straight down the line thriller would have been much more effective and a much stronger choice from the BBC.

The problem with BBC commissions at the moment is their lack of vision to make original drama, they appear to want to be commercial whilst trying to service what is current and hotly debated. This leaves the BBC feeling confused and only concerned with issues that trend in London and liberal media outlets.

ITV have delivered Christie stronger, better and more radically than the BBC over the last two decades. So perhaps it would be nice to see this 'tradition' of a bbc Christie at Christmas knocked on the head, until they begin to understand how to produce drama that doesn't betray the source.

This was just a real dud.

My husband and I are impressed with David Jonsson, whom we are watching for the first time. His character is classy, like old school acting we haven't seen in a while.

I am no more a fan of revising classic works than the next Marple fan. I've seen "4:50 to Paddington," with Joan Hickson, more times than I can count. When it was remade some years later, there were some tweaks to the story, but I enjoyed that version too, especially with Highclere as the filming location. As far as other retellings after Joan Hickson's time, I felt some were good and some not.

They never did "Murder is Easy," with Joan Hickson. In my opinion, Benedict Cumberbatch made the version he was in, as he assisted Miss Marple ("not a Miss Pinkerton" - no offense to the wonderful Penelope Wilton) because, frankly, the subject was particularly distasteful.

I am reviewing this before I see the second part of this new "Murder is Easy" because I already know my opinion of what makes watching this version worth at least one viewing: the lovely filming locations, Penelope Wilton, Douglas Henshall, Mark Bonnar, Matthew Baynton, and the old-style charm of David Jonsson, which is why I'm being generous with my rating.

I doubt the BBC cares what fans of British mysteries think of their revisions. There have been some pretty awful re-re-re-retellings of classic titles this past decade, to be sure. The best we can do is not watch what isn't good - but then we can't always know it isn't good until we watch. And maybe that's why the BBC keeps the bad revisions coming? No, they'll do what they want anyway.