I can't stand this new spinster. She's too... twee? The old Miss Marple was just a nosey old woman who didn't try to be so damn cute. Bleh. Although, I must say that I haven't the foggiest idea who the culprit is. But yet at the same time there were too many people who looked alike in my opinion, and i got lost.

ITA...and self-consciously twinkly too. It's almost as if the director said, "Look twinkly and smile now." Message received...once too often.

I have no idea who the culprit is either but I figured the French poseurs were far too obvious, the wife appeared to be in a clinch, and the daughter? I guess I'll find out next week. According to a pal who saw all four of the new Marples, "A Murder is Announced" was the best of the lot.

And that she's played by Jane Asher, Paul McCartney's girlfriend in the early 1960s, and sister to Peter Asher, Peter of Peter & Gordon and big-time record producer.

I enjoyed last night's episode, too. Back in the 60s and 70s I read all the Agatha Christie books several times and could almost never remember whodunit -- that's how they're written. But I like the settings and the atmosphere and this production is capturing that. I don't mind this Miss Marple, but I liked Joan Hickson the best.

ITA. I thought it was me, glad to see other were having a problem telling the characters apart.

Joan Hickson was absolutely perfect for the part.

I'm still enjoying this, although the new backstory for Miss Marple just seems so... unnecessary. I just a total sucker for these period imports, and recognizing all the British H!ITG!s. Plus, Derek Jacobi and Janet McTeer! Awesome.

I wonder why the time period was changed from 1930 to what appears to be the mid-fifties. I'd rather have had it set as it is in the book, in that period between the two wars when that whole English lifestyle was in its final years.

I agree that Miss Marple is a bit too twinkly and that creating a backstory for her is pointless and somewhat annoying. Since I've really read about Miss M more than seen her portrayed on TV or in movies, I always picture her as a being more like an old hawk than an old wren.

I do think the production is keeping close to the plot of the book despite the change in decades, and so there should be lots of satisfying twists and turns before the killer is revealed. The Murder at the Vicarage was the first AC work featuring Miss Marple, though she wasn't the main character. The action was seen through the eyes of the vicar, and he and his wife weren't always complimentary about the nosy old woman.

I don't mind the series so far. I didn't watch the original Marples on Mystery! in the 80s so I don't have anything to compare it too.

Are you sure the time frame was changed from the 30s to the 50s?

Yes, time frame was changed to the 1950's, which is a little off-putting. While any Miss Marple is better than no Miss Marple, I too find the backstory a bit off. Why do we need to know about a failed WWI romance of Miss Marple; I would prefer more mystery about why Miss Marple is the way she is.

That's interesting. I've never read any of the books; and growing up watching the Joan Hickson series, which is also set in the late-'40s through the mid-'50s, I didn't realize that stories were meant to take place in an earlier period.


That may be an advantage because I found myself constantly comparing the events from the '80s series to the new series. Like so many others, I don't care for the backstory, and I find McEwan's interpretation of Miss Marple not very interesting. She's shown observing all the goings on of the village, but she really doesn't seem to capture the "taking everything in" quality in the same way that Hickson did. In spite of all the faults, I am enjoying seeing some of the other actors. Someone praised Jason Flemyng in the Masterpiece Theatre thread. I can't recall his character's name, but Flemyng's performance has made the artist the most interesting character so far, IMO.

Well, in the new series they've changed some of the culprits, so even if someone does remember the originals, it doesn't necesarily mean they'll know whodunnit.

I find Geraldine McEwan a little too twinkly too (I much preferred Joan Hickson, and Margaret Rutherford in the old 60s movies for the campness), but I didn't mind the backstory for Miss Marple - it goes some way to explain how an old village spinster would know so much about the ways of the heart.

I'm pretty sure though that all the Miss Marple stories are set in the late 40s/early 50s - so many of them (like the 4:50 From Paddington and The Body In The Library) feature male characters, most of them not that old, who'd served in the Second World War.

I was bad and picked up the book yesterday (but am good that I haven't cheated and read it yet). It was written in the 30s - it was actually the first Miss Marple book.

I'm so happy we started a Mystery! thread. Although I can't say I understood the complaint someone made, over the the Masterpiece Theater thread, that we shouldn't be discussing mysteries there when Mystery! IS Masterpiece Theater for the summer. There does seem to be some big deal about starting multiple threads for non-summarized programs. (You can see that some of the shows in this section have a thousand pages of comments, but televisionwithoutpity will not allow separate threads for the separate episodes.)

Anyway, just so I can stay on topic: wasn't that the most sumptuous summer ever seen in England? (And yet an English friend of mine, years ago, used to comment about beautiful evenings in Washington D.C., where we lived at the time, that such evenings came about twice a century in England. Suppose the precise location in England would make a difference.)

Am I the only one who thought it looked like deeply slanted sunlight (i.e., dusk or dawn) throughout much of the program?

The PBS Web site has a small discussion forum and someone posted this link, with some interesting background on the program: CNN

Yeah, I'm glad that we got a separate thread. It was non-intuitive for me to remember to check the Masterpiece Theatre thread to talk about Mystery!

I think the mod's point was that even though the two shows use the same timeslot (at different times of the year), they still are separate shows.

I don't understand why they felt the need to give backstory to Miss Marple either. It seemed unnecessary.

Knocks self hard on forehead! Geraldine McEwan: Magdalene Sisters! If you've ever seen that film (released 2002?), you know McEwan has it in her to be one nasty sister! I would like to see more of that edge in Marple.
That said, we haven't seen too much of the dear lady yet because Part I was all about the set-up and she was quite passive. I assume she'll get down to a bit more business in Part II and do something other than watch and twinkle.

I hope you are right, [/B]JeanPoole[B], because in rewatching Part 1, Miss Marple was just too sweet. Miss Marple should have a little more vinegar in her personality.

Are you sure the war isn't WWI? The Body in the Library was published in 1942. I've always thought that Agatha Christie always kept the Miss Marple mysteries set in the thirties no matter when she actually wrote them, because otherwise MM would be ancient by the time of the last book, which was 1976. Part of AC's basic description of MM was that her Victorian upbringing gave her certain ways of looking at things, so for her to be a "lady of a certain age" (70, when she made her first appearance in Vicarage) required freezing time in St Mary Mead. However, the stage adaptation of Murder in the Vicarage came along in 1949 and maybe that's why this production is set around that time.

Here is how Agatha Christie described her creation:

Just caught up with the first episode. So far, I'm liking it. I haven't read any of the books yet, but I did see some of the other shows.


I agree we'll have a better idea tonight as she'll have more to do. Although, I'm not minding her portrayal of Miss Marple.

It was nice to see Derek Jacobi and to see Father Clifford (Stephen Tompkinson) of Ballykissangel make an appearance.

Because her writing spanned many decades, AC must have been influenced by many things, including both world wars. But she began writing in the 20s and 30s and many of her books reflect post WWI England. England lost a significant portion of its male population in the Great War and that's why AC's books have a lot of widows and spinsters -- women who were raised to be wives, but whose husbands or prospects were killed in the war. Women without vocation who found themselves living and growing old in genteel poverty and dependent on relatives or on jobs like being a lady's companion ("Death on the Nile"). It took a generation to replenish the male population. So the Miss Marple backstory is relevant and informative, though it wasn't in the book and wastes time in the TV production.

I'm looking forward to tonight!

Was the backstory in any of the books?

I didn't like the second half of this very well. That actress playing Miss Marple was really bugging me. She wasn't very convincing -- all mannerisms and no character. Also, that gallows stuff at the end was way over the top. And I couldn't understand the expression on Miss Marple's face at the end when she was sitting in the church, but it seemed wrong.

I know I'll keep watching these though, cause I've read all the books, I like seeing the clothes and settings and actors, and it's fun to dish about it here.

I fell asleep and Mr. Milz didn't watch it for me. Whodunit?

It was the artist and the Colonel's wife. They made it seem as if it was too obvious it was them but it was them. They knew each other before the war but he was MIA. She got married and then found out he was alive.

And, I guessed it before Miss Marple said who done it! As soon as the artist tried to kill the stealin' clergyman, I knew it.

Aw, a little Lord Percy is on its way. Its still strange seeing Father Peter without his collar.

I didn’t like her at all. She seemed a little to frowsy and not well enough put together and not nosy enough. Joan Hickson was perfect. The age still doesn’t add up for the WWI connection. If it were a different war, perhaps. She knows the reasons for the murders not because she's had certain experiences, but that people in St. Mary Mead have had experiences and that show that people's action are universal, whether in a small town or a large city.

Also, why would they change the person who committed the crime? To satisfy people who read the book? Sorry, I like the original (not that I remember who actually did it in this case). To satisfy people who haven’t read the book? Was it done for effect? Who decides to change it?


If I can remember I'll watch.

What was the deal with the Frenchman and his granddaughter? I told Mr. Milz last week I didn't think she was his granddaughter....

One good thing about the second episode was that I finally stopped thinking of Miss Marple as Lucia from "Mapp and Lucia". Well, at least until now.
Everytime she was with her gang of spinsters and kooks I half-expected her to leave them waving her hand and screaming "Au Resevoir!" whilst walking out of frame.

This bothered me as well. It looked like she was smirking to me. She had that same expression when she was in the sidecar on the motorcycle. I guess she was smiling/thinking about her lost love, but it just looked wrong cut in with the scenes of the hangings.


I'm sure someone can do a much better job of explaining, but here goes. The Frenchman's son was engaged to the woman that was there with him. They knew the colonel from the war. There was some kind of deal struck with the colonel where he betrayed them for money. The girl and Frenchman's son were waiting in a field (or something) for a package to be dropped. The plane flew by them and dropped the package a mile away (which the colonel arranged). The girl managed to get away, but the Frenchman's son was tortured and killed. They were snooping around the house for evidence of this which they found.

I felt a little let down by the conclusion, although I'm not sure why because I didn't figure it out.

No, the age and time frame still aren't right for WWI, but to be real charitable to this production, if Miss Marple is 70 and it's the early fifties, I can say it was the Boer War.

I think the church/hanging was supposed to reveal that, as Agatha Christie had said, Miss Marple always thought the worst of people and was often frighteningly correct. I figured she was saying a prayer for them even as she thought they were coming to their just end.

The actual murderers weren't changed, but the whole thing about the Frenchman and his assistant was, to incorporate all the WW2 French resistance explanation. Another change that wouldn't have been necessary if they'd left the setting in its 1930 original form. I believe in the book they were there posing as archeologists to steal some valuable 17th century candlesticks from The Hall. There was a passing reference to this when they were apprehended in this version; the inspector said something like "what do you have there, the silver?"

I actually liked the interpretation of Miss Marple more in the second half, especially the way she watched everyone. Ms Christie used the term "birdlike" to describe it, and I thought the bright beady curious eyes were exactly what she meant. I think it's important to remember that this was the first appearance of Jane Marple and her character wasn't nearly as developed as it would be in later works, so it's not really surprising that some of our favorite Marple-y characteristics aren't obvious in Vicarage.

The way she appeared as a young woman in the backstory kept reminding me of the Flonase commercials with the "film noir" woman. I kept expecting her to ask for a refill on her nasal spray.

Having read the books long ago, the whodunit portion of the story is always secondary to how Marple figures it out. I can live with the Marple time machine putting the setting in the 50's. What I found dissonant was the varying acting styles in this.
Some of the actors, McTeer and McInnerny come to mind, just played characters you believed. Other actors (you know who you are!) pretty much bought in to the ham-fest atmosphere and decided to chew on all the scenery. When you have so many talented guest stars, it IS a way to be noticed but it completely gets the viewer out of the story and into the performance. Not always a good thing.

I didn't find Marple as irritatingly twinkly in Part-deux, but I found myself having Vincent D'Onofrio flashbacks and it's why I find it difficult to watch Law & Order: CI...he just works too hard Acting, with a capital A! McEwan is doing the same thing.

"A Murder is Announced" comes recommended as the best of the lot, so I'll watch the next couple to see if twinkle toes can lose a bit of spark.

Putting all the stories in the same time period seems a simple matter of budget and logistics for a production that has to span a number of books (I think the Poirot series did the same thing).

I like the series so far because I'm a total sucker for these things, but Geraldine McEwan does seem wrong. It's especially odd because the article in The New York Times about the series said she beat out a number of other distinguished actresses for the part.

Ok, I know that this new Ms. Marple needs to bring her own flavor and style to character and I can't reasonably expect her to mimic her predecesor but... damn! Must we have the painfully obvious my-mind-is-tinkering-and-in-two-seconds-I-will-have-the-answer expression goin' on in every damn scene?

Although, I must say that I enjoyed the "you missed a spot" bit when the Inspector was goin' on about someone gettin' up there in age while washing dishes with Marple.... and that he was oblivious to it.

I'm a sucker for anything British and mystery related so you'll hear my complaints every monday, crap acting be damned!

I also liked when the inspector said "I don't know whether to buy her a box of chocs or kick her stick away." To which she replied, "I'd prefer the chocs."

I can see that setting the stories in the 1950's does make sense, social attidudes for the country-house set had probably not changed too significantly from the 1930's and props such as cars and buses are easier to find. Having said that, some details looked wrong, the mail box should have been a rectangular type set into a wall or bracketed from a lamp post, not the 1980's reproduction of a Victorian free-standing type. I also think that the wide exterior shots of the vicarage used a superimposition technique, it looked too flat to be real.
Christie's protagonists tend to be stereotypical, so I can see the temptation to turn them into caricatures ( e.g. alcoholic, and irascible retired Colonel).
Did I notice such details because I was not happy with the portrayal of Miss Marple, or was it the other way round? My recollection of the Joan Hickson episodes was that her portrayal was radically different from that of Margaret Rutherford, but worked very well. I felt that Geraldine McEwan was delivering lines written for Rutherford, in a style very much closer to Hickson, and am not sure if she ever truly got into character.

Whoa. Rest easy, Joan Hickson, you'll no more be replaced than Jeremy Brett will be.

Ick. Nice to have some recognizable Brit mystery actors around, but whomever made this casting decision ought to be boiled in their own pudding.

Awful, McEwan is awful. Based on my personal adoration of Hickson, mind you, not on reading the books. She is SOOOOO obviously acting, it hits one square between the eyes. She no more imbues Marple with character than does her white picket fence.

Her backstory? Makes me want to retch, I fast forwarded through it in the second episode.

Joan Hickson will BE Miss Marple forever and ever and ever.

Somebody smack that smirk off McEwan, post haste.

And my, did Jane Asher age badly or what?

I finished reading Murder at the V yesterday and the descriptions of Miss Marple in the book are somehow similar to McEwan. The murderer is the same two people.

Well, not as well as Sir Paul eh? She has to be pushing 60 though doesn't she? That's half the fun of these Mystery!s, playing HITG and then being thoroughly depressed at how some of them have aged...or not.

Ah well, back to Ms. Marple...is she a birdlike, beady eyed creature as Christie wrote or have we all become accustomed to the decidedly non-birdlike Marples of the past? I just wish McEwan would wratchet the "cute/twinkle" down to a tolerable level and let the guest stars run with it.

So, did anyone watch "A Murder is Announced"? Anyone? Bueller?

I did. Miss Marple continues to twinkle, although I like how the clueless detective has started to listen to her. I don't know whodunnit and I don't particularly care. These characters are far less engaging than those in the last installment.

Miss Marple didn't bother me so much in this one and the storyline seems to be following the book pretty closely -- though it's been ages since I read this.


Agatha Christie stories are almost always like that for me -- she creates a bunch of characters and gives them all motive and opportunity and then in the end just sort of picks one. I can rarely remember who and usually don't care. I'm enjoying watching these shows, though -- a look back into another time and place and a program where no one is eating bugs and worms or slicing through cadavers.

BTW, I think this is a different detective (Craddock) from the last story (Slack).

I watched "A Murder is Announced" yesterday, and I'm not sure why I bothered. My local PBS station ran the Joan Hickson version recently, making it easy to compare the two. The new version was badly scripted, with cardboard characters, which resulted in poor acting all round. It appears that if the writer doesn't know what to do with a character, that character is written as a drunk (Jane Asher last week, and this week's Colonel). The lesbian - dress her like a man, and throw in a few gratituous remarks about her mannish demeanour. One advantage to this was that I could at least tell her from the other females.

Geraldine McEwan's portrayal of Miss Marple is just not working, and appears to consist only of practiced mannerisms, surely there is more this old biddy than a stiff-legged walk, a twinkling eye, and a wardrobe at least thirty years out of date? One thought, does McEwan actually have something wrong with her legs? If so it might explain why she is normally sitting somewhere, on the margins of the story.

Consider also the remark about people formerly arriving in a new village with introductions. From the back story Miss Marple would have arrived from her driving gig in 1918 as a middle-aged would-be husband-stealer, hardly likely to be accepted by the community, especially those of her own age.

So, all bad thigs must come to an end. Then a trailer for Rupert Everett as Sherlock Holmes, rivalling the nun from "Revalations", for inappropriate overuse of make up. Then "Rosemary and Thyme" well scripted, much better acted, finally someone had got something right.

This is exactly how the character is written in the book, though.

You're right -- good point! Why did they persist in using that stupid back story?

I saw it. Halfway through, Mr. Milz got up to make popcorn and never came back. I found him later in our bedroom watching L&O: Criminal Intent---I feel so betrayed.

Anyhow, I don't know whodunit and I'm not really caring at this point either. :(

I'd like to chime in with how much I absolutely hate the way that actress is portraying Miss Marple.

I actually preferred this ep to the prior two. However, McEwan still hasn't found a Marple that I either like, believe, or remotely enjoy. She's still "acting" and her little mincing/stiff legged walk just irritates. I'm usually very patient with my elders but she appears to be milking it a bit.

The lesbian "dress her like a man...." didn't bug me as much as Catherine Tate channeling Andy Kaufman doing the Polish Jew Mitzi Kosinski (sp?) role. She did provide the comic relief and I'm preferring to think it was intentional because the other option is too tragic.
I also like this Inspector. He's a bit more charming and understated in his clumsy/goofy way. His reaction to being dressed down by Philippa was adorable.

The problem with this as with a lot of Christie mysteries is, you never really get to know the victim well so not much is invested in caring who killed him. Yes, how sad someone died, but we didn't know him and you haven't made us care.

That bugged me too. I love Catherine Tate (her comedy show The Catherine Tate Show and her performance in Wild Wst are both hilarious), but she was far too O.T.T in A Murder is Announced. By comparison, the actress who played the cook in the Joan Hickson version of the story looked and sounded (and probably was) convincingly Eastern European, and gave a far superior performance because of it.

That was a nice surprise seeing Matthew Goode. If he turns out to be the murderer, it will be easy figuring it out each series, it is whoever M. Darcy thinks is the cutest. I knew the Colonel looked familiar - he was in The Englishman Who Went Up A Mountain....

Didn't she, Pooki??? I can STILL hear her saying "Blacklock" in my head.



Absolutely, JeanPoole. She's a competent enough actress, but her casting is from hunger.

I think a lot of mysteries and Mystery!s follow this pattern. I don't think that's the entire problem, because a lot of other series still manage to be very engaging even when we don't know anything about the victim.

So far I'm finding the series watchable but it's not really holding my interest.