Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Bobby Attfield is walking along a cliff top when he spies a body at the foot of the cliff. He rushes down to the man, whose dying words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?". He is convinced that something nefarious has just occurred and his suspicions are heightened when he misses the man's inquest, due to being sent the incorrect time and location for the inquest. In his corner is Frankie Derwent and an old friend of the family, Miss Marple.

Started well. The murder was intriguing and the relationship between Bobby and Frankie, solidly played by Sean Biggerstaff and Georgia Moffett, was a great sub-plot. However, the mystery seemed to get overly complex, simply for complexity's sake, after a point and the climax, and back-story, is quite far-fetched. Not all bad, but could have been so much better.

Some big names in the supporting cast but they aren't all used well. Natalie Dormer is fine in her role but Warren Clarke overdoes the alpha male routine, resulting in him shouting almost all his lines. Rik Mayall is wasted in his part, and doesn't have much screen time anyway. Hannah Murray is incredibly irritating.

I struggle a little with this one, as it's one of the novels I really like, it's a book that draws you in, builds the characters and has a really satisfying conclusion.

Bobby Attfield hears a dying mans last words while out walking, 'Why didn't they ask Evans?' With the help of friend Frankie Derwent and later Jane Marple's the lead takes them to the family home of the dysfunctional Savages, as they try to uncover the cryptic message and uncover dark secrets.

I'm a really easy Agatha Christie fan to please, it doesn't take a huge deal to make me happy, this one fails pretty much, the characters are almost made into caricatures, they're all a little bit over the top and unbelievable. Apart from Miss Marple and Bobby Attfield most of the others are just a bit too much.

There are some nice elements to this story, Julia McKenzie drives the story, she literally is too good for the material and script she's given. Georgia Moffett and Sean Biggerstaff both give fairly good performances. It looks really nice, there is some gorgeous filming, the music also is brilliant, it's really melodic.

For the first time in a Marple I actually find some of the acting a bit weak, I have always loved both Samantha Bond and Warren Clarke, but both are below par, Hannah Murray is either poor or dreadfully written, I can't distinguish, but Freddie Fox is abysmal, he looks like he's just going through the motions. Some of the dialogue is quite dull and uninteresting.

The ending verges on Melodrama, it's like something you'd expect an am dram group to put on, it just didn't work.

I've watched it a few times, on occasion I quite like it, but in comparison to others in the series it is the ugly duckling. 5/10

It bemuses me that television writers believe they can 'improve' upon a story written by the best-selling author of the twentieth-century. Miss Marple did not appear in the original novel, so it was a bold stance to introduce her to this tale - that is perhaps the only way that the TV writer actually demonstrated some skill, by managing to inter-twine her among the other events. There is a truly excellent cast, floundering against a poor script, made especially bad by the necessity to introduce a character by the name of Evans. The original story is effectively mentioned in passing in a few of the key events from the original story, but that is as close this production gets to actually having anything to do with the real Christie story. In reality this is a new story by someone who just got so many elements wrong! I cannot classify this as 1 (awful) because the highly skilled actors do the best they can to pull off a reasonable performance, but this is not a good production. Julia McKenzie tried very hard but she just did not appear anything like the Miss Marple that Dame Agatha created, perhaps because her part was created by a television writer not the late, great mistress of crime fiction. 2 and a half out of 10 is the best I could give to this effort.

Not all the recent Marple adaptations are bad or disappointing, Pocket Full of Rye, The Blue Geranium and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side(I'd go further to say this one especially was the best version of the book) were excellent and Murder is Announced and Moving Finger were surprisingly good too. Why Didn't They Ask Evans? is not as bad as Nemesis, Sittaford Mystery and At Betram's Hotel, but for me it is one of the dullest and more disappointing entries to the series.

Is it bad as an adaptation? Yes it is really. The book was a compelling enough read without being definitive, the story and characters were interesting in the book, but the adaptation does a lot of alterations in the sense that the plot is one big rambling, illogical mess with a very unsatisfying and somewhat convoluted conclusion and the characters(more cardboard cut-outs than characters) I felt nothing for. The pacing is also very sluggish and the dialogue is weak, some of it is among the weakest I've heard in a Christie adaptation actually.

When it comes to the acting, only Julia McKenzie stands out properly. She is terrific as Miss Marple, with a wisdom and charm that makes you warm to her immediately. Georgia Moffett is decent too as is Sean Biggerstaff, but actors such as Richard Briers are given next to nothing to work with which is shameful in my opinion, Rik Mayall has never looked and acted as bored as he is here and this is one of those rarities where I didn't like Samantha Bond or Warren Clarke either. Bond has a very uninteresting character with some poor dialogue and she manages to be both flaccid and shrill at the same time. Clarke suffers from pretty much the same problems, and his shouting did get tiresome after a while. The worst of the performances comes from Freddie Fox who is really quite awful.

Despite all these outweighing criticisms, there is some good, aside from McKenzie. The production values are wonderful, with great photography and beautiful and authentic scenery and costumes. The music is both beautiful and haunting, and the direction also has flashes of brilliance. But really, this could and should have been much better than it was. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Probably one of the worst adaptations of an Agatha Christie work if not the very worst. Apart from the general story there are just too many changes to the original book, too many characters added that simply don't exist, too many characters removed and too many plot changes to what should be one of the cleverest Christie stories. Adding Marple was a waste of time. This version is made worse by some appalling acting from usually gifted performers and is made to look very 10th rate compared to far superior and much truer 2022 version. The plot twist at the end is just complete nonsense to go with what is a complete load of nonsense.