Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Agatha Christie's original novel was a light read, and above all, fun. Its plot was great as it was— a light romantic comedy/thriller, with enough plot to make it absolutely perfect for translation onto the screen. Unfortunately, Patrick Barlow, the screenwriter, decided he could out-Christie Christie. He can't.

I'm not a completely conservative Christie fan. If a book won't translate well to the screen, then some changes may be in order. I support that. But here, the plot changes don't work in the least— they subtract from the plot instead of adding. We now have a rather strange assortment of guests, a rather weird family history (which makes the odious move to constantly emphasize mysterious happenings in China), and a convoluted plot that leaves the audience spinning. Either way, it feels out-of-place in the fifties; the story belongs in the thirties. Besides, the climax is unrealistic— I would be amused to attend the trial that resulted.

Agatha Christie's novel was a fun read: not as compelling as, say, "And Then There Were None", but one where the characters rang true and the reader *wanted* to know the solution. The film feels strange— none of the characters feel like characters. They feel like dreadful cardboard caricatures who solely exist to scream or act suspiciously, ringing false. The only worthwhile characters are Bobby and Frankie, as well as Miss Marple.

Where acting is concerned, we have a case of a few strong cast members wading through weak material. Julia Mackenzie is absolutely stellar as Miss Marple: she is shrewd, but conceals this with a "harmless old lady" charm. Watch as she talks to a doctor, trying to get more information about a photograph. She transitions perfectly from the photograph to discussing a flower, then right back to the photograph. She puts on a perfect act that would fool mostly any murderer, and indeed, Mackenzie turns out to be the best actor of the piece. In fact, it is solely due to Mackenzie that the ridiculous climax turns out amusing-to-watch.

Two more actors stand out: Sean Biggerstaff (Bobby—Attfield? Would it have killed the producers to use "Jones"?) and Georgia Moffett (Frankie Derwent). The two have some veritable chemistry between them, and play their roles perfectly.

And now, I must mention the film's weakest actors. The first is Samantha Bond as Sylvia Savage. She exists solely to stare blankly, exclaim "Shut up!" every once in a while, and be a pathetic nuisance to all those around. Freddie Fox as Tom Savage is a particularly poor actor. His idea of acting suspiciously/mysteriously involves perpetually crouching in shadows while caressing a snake. Then, we have Commander Peters, played by Warren Clarke, who either has a serious anger management problem or has gone quite deaf—his role involves screaming, shouting, and a touch of yelling. And last, but not least, we have "Dottie", played by Hannah Murray. She remains a gawky, two-dimensional caricature wearing glasses, whose sole purpose is to loudly disclose embarrassing secrets at the dinner table. (Personally, I much prefer Aunt Cora from "After the Funeral".) By the end, I was hoping she "knew too much", and the killer would make her the next victim.

One last word: this barely felt like a TV movie. The direction was wonderful! And while we're at it, let's mention the music: although these films range in quality from "poor" to "excellent", Dominik Scherrer's music is consistently brilliant. If a CD of his compositions for this series is ever released, I'll be at the front of the line.

So, let's review, shall we? "Why Didn't They Ask Evans" has been altered beyond recognition for its TV adaptation. The acting is often poor, although the leads are phenomenal. The direction is top-notch, as is the music. But overall, "Evans" fails, due to the plot changes that only detract from it.

So the question I want answered is this: why didn't they leave "Evans" alone?

I have an idea that this whole story has been drastically changed from the original Agatha Christie story because it's so totally absurd from start to finish, with a host of unbelievable characters and Miss Marple thrown into the mix for the sake of all the changes in the plotting.

WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS? never makes real sense of any plot development and why or how Miss Marple is able to deduce all that she does based on the flimsiest of clues while knitting away as though her mind is on anything but solving a murder, is the real mystery.

Again, JULIA McKENZIE does a nice job as the rather inquisitive old lady but the plot is so full of red herrings and suspicions pointed at the wrong people that it's really no fun for the mystery fan to even try deciphering the truth. The final scene is so far fetched, it has to rank as one of the most unrealistic and melodramatic endings ever shown in a Christie tale.

It appears that the writer has decided to make something very exotic out of the whole tale and whatever remains of the original is probably well hidden.

For those who have read the book as it's almost totally different. Georgia Moffett and Sean Biggerstaff do a decent job as the main characters as do the rest of the cast. It was , however, a very strange part for the excellent Warren Clarke.

On occasions I thought I was watching a comedy and this was in scenes which were supposed to be a bit nasty.

I understand that it was done a lot better in 1980.

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.

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.