Un meurtre est-il si facile ?

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.

Putting a new spin on an old story is nothing new, and occasionally produces real gems, so ignore the people who were always going to hate anything that places brown faces in roles they grew up seeing white ones on TV. Despite the racism of the past, there were a good number of notably successful black and Asian people in Britain and the US (going back a couple of hundred years) - they just weren't in the films and TV shows the people complaining watched as children, and they weren't taught about in schools.

All that said, there are many more legitimate reasons to swerve this adaptation. It just lacked any real sense of jeopardy or tension. The pacing was off. Many of the characters came across as caricatures. There were too many ideas and unfinished / unexplored red herrings and other dramatic devices. All in all, it just felt like it was executed by people who don't love or understand the genre. Worth dozing on the sofa to one Sunday afternoon, but not much more than that, I'm afraid.

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.

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.

Well, the scenery and locations didn't disappoint. They're absolutely gorgeous (filmed in Scotland I believe).

Agatha Christie stories are pretty rote so the bar isn't too high, but this two-parter didn't manage to clear it.

The body count was really too high for Our Hero (Luke Fitzwilliam) to sink his teeth into any one murder and frankly while he did ID the killer in the end ... he was one step behind the whole way, unlike say Miss Marple.

About the casting and the plot line:

I was very distracted by the fact that David Jonsson's left eye is much smaller than his right. There are many many closeups of his face where this affected my ability to focus on the plot.

Apparently in order to justify casting a Black actor in the lead role, they gave him a back story as being from a rich Nigerian family and coming to London to work in a diplomatic post as an attache to some British muckymuck. He speaks with a posh accent and there is almost no relevance to his African background in terms of the plot.

We get some stereotypical racist comments about "mud huts" from the local high and mighty lord of the manor, but almost everybody else in the film basically just accepts him and appears virtually color-blind. In 1954 rural England? I dunno about that.

Also, he's not given much to do, other than to wander around snooping, and then give a knowing smile in almost every scene.

The dialogue he was given to say didn't help at all.

I couldn't help feeling, this would have been a much better production if they'd just stuck with a snoopy old maid like Miss Marple as the detective.