Partners in Crime

Maybe it is because I read the books or saw the (1983) (TV Mini-Series with Francesca Annis and James Warwick), that it takes some time to accept the characters in this (2015) (TV Mini-Series with Jessica Rain and David Williams.) then when you think about it the characters are what they are supposed to be and not particularly what you would have written them as.

This is a 1950's period piece and the characters, clothing, cars, etc. Are quite convincing.

We follow the partners as they move from their mundane life as beekeepers to quasi investigators of spies and other despicable characters. With the help of friends and relatives, they foil evil plots against man, king, and country.

Agatha Christie was not smothered up by the TV scriptwriting. There are of course changes for the different media. It took a bit of time to get used to as I would not have given a good rating until well into the story.

The way this "Partners in Crime" series started I expected a madcap duo with interesting personalities to go chasing criminals across the countryside, rescuing a damsel in distress. Instead, Walliams as Tommy is so weak as a character, he has no funny lines, he doesn't seem friendly with Raine as Tuppence much less her adoring husband, and is not even convincing as a bumbling idiot. He appears to be an understudy substituted in a pinch -- totally unconvincing, pasty-faced, blunted emotions, and stands around like he doesn't know his next mark. He ruins the show for me.

But Raines doesn't do much better. She is great to look at and occasionally funny and the much smarter character of the two. You have to wonder what brought them together -- certainly not passion or chemistry. They don't even seem like best friends.

Then the plot never really gels. There is scene after scene of bland interior rooms where the bad guys are almost goofy, no one has a clue what is going on, and big holes in the plot loom around every corner. It desperately needs tightening up, replacement of Walliams with someone wittier and more manly, and could easily be cut down to 2 episodes rather than three.

What about the opera singer? What was that all about? That part never even went anywhere, and they spent so much time featuring Ms. Raines at a typewriter. Why? Nonsense.

I also felt annoyed by the too-bright crayon colors of the filming. It looked like they had used a saturation filter to juice it up.

All in all, a wasted afternoon. I would have done better to watch some of the old Christie movies.

The negative reviews of this series are laughable. Is it spot-on Agatha Christie? No. Is it fun? Yes. Suspenseful and enjoyable. Jessica Raine is not attractive? Oh, please. Yes, David Wallaims' character is a bit of a dolt, but that's part of the charm of the series. The acting is fine; the script is fine; and the stories are engaging. The episodes each ended with engaging cliff-hangers, and the resolution of each was believable. The series also captures a post-war '50s feel quite nicely. Some of the folks who reviewed this seemed determined not to like it, and it might not be your cup of tea. But I found plenty to like here, and wish that they had made more.

Although Agatha Christie is one of my favourite authors, adaptations of her work have always personally been judged on how good they are on their own merits, regardless of how good or bad an adaptation it is.

The Tommy and Tuppence books/stories are entertaining reads, though none of them are among my favourites from Christie, and the 80s Partners in Crime series is not only true in details and spirit to the stories but charming, suspenseful, light-hearted entertainment in its own right. But when advertised I surprisingly didn't find myself desperate in seeing this, which is highly unusual for an Agatha Christie adaptation. Despite looking good visually, the casting just seemed off and even when advertised the writing seemed clunky.

Finally giving it the benefit of the doubt, and without comparison to the source material and the previous Partners in Crime series, as someone who loves Agatha Christie and who has enjoyed a large amount of adaptations of her work this was disappointing. It has a few plus points, with the best thing about it being the production values. The 1950s setting is evoked beautifully, the scenery is positively sumptuous and at times effectively mysterious and a lot of work clearly went into evoking the period, because the attention to detail is great. It is also very stylishly filmed and atmospherically lit. While the acting is a vast majority really not very good, a couple of performances are decent, with particular mention going to an effectively menacing Jonny Phillips in The Secret Adversary, who shows that you don't have to do an awful lot to make one feel uneasy, and Christina Cole as a seemingly vulnerable Mrs Sprot, which Cole handles affectingly without being passive.

However, that is pretty much it for the good things. One of the main things that ruins Partners in Crime is the woeful miscasting of David Walliams as Tommy, have nothing personal against Walliams but there was the fear that he would be out of place and stick out like a sore thumb and that fear was proved correct. Walliams even when playing straight often looks vacant and doesn't seem to have a clue as to whether to camp it up as Tommy or underplay, his performance here is a mess of both and he never looks comfortable doing either, he acts jarringly buffoonish when camping it up, the dramatic scenes being very overwroughtly played, and when underplaying he is incredibly wooden.

While Jessica Raine is not as badly affected, this viewer is in the camp of not finding her that much better, she doesn't look very engaged as Tuppence (as if she didn't want to be there), a very charming and authoritative role, and comes over as rather too forceful in the more dramatic scenes, although this is more to do with how the character is written here Raine seems and acts too modern for the 50s, at least in this series. The two have no obvious chemistry together, while it may not have been the case at all it was like they didn't get along, or maybe it was how the roles were written because Tuppence looked more annoyed with rather in love with Tommy. Both manage to do something seemingly impossible and make Tommy and Tuppence annoying. The rest of the acting is not good either, the lack of chemistry also applies to the supporting cast which severely undermines the tension and pacing of the stories and few seem sure of how to play their roles.

As good as the production values are, the effort put into them doesn't translate in the music, script and storytelling. The music is too loud, too much, too constant and too intrusive, not to mention very one-note mood-wise, even in scenes that would have benefited from more understated scoring or none at all. The script-writing is clunky and instead of being suspenseful and light-hearted it's like trudging and struggling through very thick mud, and it never feels like it belongs in the 1950s, constantly I felt like I was yanked back to 21st century. The dialogue, complete with comic elements in serious need of a toning down, dramatic elements that are talky and overwrought and mystery elements that feel under-explained and as long a way from tense as one can get, is rather stilted and lacks pulse and urgency, especially in the talkier scenes.

Sadly, the storytelling in both The Secret Adversary and N or M, but in particularly the former, is near-disastrous. Even if both as stories in book-form are slow going at times, both are pretty diverting in their own right, but the storytelling in the series rambles on ponderously as a result of far too much padding (the first part of The Secret Adversary in particular is a real slog), with a lot of the 'tense' or 'suspenseful' scenes instead bordering on the laboured, and there are additions that are either silly (some of N or M did get ridiculous in places), pointless or confuse the story, sometimes even all three. Even when episodes gain some momentum (the second part of The Secret Adversary did pick up slightly) they are spoilt by being confused or getting too ridiculous. Regarding the direction, while it fares well visually and does a good job bringing a sense of period it does poorly in the direction of the actors, most of whom look lost at sea with what to do, and with the storytelling.

In conclusion, while some viewers may have felt that Partners in Crime had a slow start but got better, for me and other viewers, the series never really ignited fire. This is a real shame, as this is coming from a viewer who tries to find merit in even the weakest adaptations of her work. Not the worst Agatha Christie adaptation ever, but one of the most of the most disappointing (even on its own terms), in spite of my initial intrepidation. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Only one Series, comprising two 3 part stories, firstly we had The Secret Adversary, and secondly we had N or M.

I thought they were rather fun productions, trouble is they seriously didn't feel like Agatha Christie, I thought the first part of The Secret Adversary was excellent, but after that it went downhill a little bit.

Jessica Raine was really well cast, she looked excellent in the part, fitting of the period. I think Walliams was the main issue for the failing, for anyone that has read the novels he just wasn't Tommy. Far from it, he was out of character, I couldn't relate him to the books.

Really great production values, they looked excellent, even though the time frame had been altered.

I don't think the series was given enough mileage, who knows, if it had continued maybe there would have been an improvement. There were only 5 Partners in Crime novels, the best one I think being 'by the Pricking of my thumbs' shame it won't be made.

6/10.