Agatha Christie
Jasper Rees
A year ago to the day the BBC laid on a festive slaughter of Agatha Christie characters. And Then There Were None had the look of a well-dressed abattoir as her victims toppled like ninepins at the hands of an invisible slayer. The scriptwriter Sarah Phelps has returned to the queen of crime for this year’s two-part Christmas murder mystery. The source for The Witness for the Prosecution is a mere 23-page story in which there’s really only house room for one corpse. It belongs to the unfortunate Emily French (Kim Cattrall), a hot-to-frot society dame of a certain vintage who has a weakness Read more ...
David Nice
None, or two? Only the tiniest whiff of spoiler is involved in pointing out that while the stage version, or at least the one I saw with an actor friend playing an early victim, settled for a semi-happy ending, this magnificently brooding adaptation in three parts – just the right length, surely – dooms us to ultimate discomfort, as an especially merciless Agatha Christie intended. The bare essentials of what may well be her masterpiece, with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Endless Night close contenders, were all professionally bolted in place, and the embroideries in a faithful 1939 setting Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Inevitably, an aura of fin-de-siècle gloom hung heavily over this final Poirot. So daunting was the prospect of terminating his 25-year career-defining stint as Belgium's finest (albeit imaginary) export that David Suchet insisted on shooting the last one before the others in the concluding series.In many respects it was business as usual. An A-list of reliable British thesps (Anne Reid, Phil Glenister, John Standing and a deservedly-promoted Aidan McArdle) found themselves incarcerated amid the spartan, crumbling surroundings of a lonely country house. The rain beat down, and the tall trees Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In recent times, the Middle Ages have been ghettoised on those channels you watch in pubs. Game of Thrones, and anything by Regius Professor of bunkum Ken Follett, are history laid on for people who don’t give a toss about history. You know, the snorey stuff about canon law and tithe barns. For those who prefer their medieval high jinks only semi-faked, The White Queen prances into one’s purview on a white liveried steed. Its aim is to show a clean pair of hooves to all that oikish pillaging and plotting which have lately steamed up the nation’s undergarments.Philippa Gregory’s trilogy about Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Crime fiction once lured you in with lurid covers acting like a B-movie poster or fairground barker, selling the promise of thrills within. The British Library’s new exhibition is disappointingly light on such disreputable fare, and much too brief. But within its self-imposed limits it manages to indicate the genre’s range, and illuminate some forgotten corners.The small, alphabetically themed gallery includes a couple of the treasures otherwise locked in the Library’s archive. The neat, unmarked text of Conan Doyle’s manuscript for a late Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A blackout, a snowstorm, a scream, and there you have it – the longest-running play of all time. The mystery of The Mousetrap is legendary, preserved by a code of silence that bonds all those who have performed and watched this classic whodunnit. Yet greater even than this is surely the enigma of how so generic, so unassuming a play should come to endure so persistently. Is it merely tradition that keeps Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap in business, or can this period piece really still have something fresh to say in its resolutely RP tones?Approaching its 25,000th performance, The Mousetrap is Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
David Suchet has been perfecting his impersonation of Hercule Poirot for more than 20 years, perhaps sympathising with Tina Turner’s maxim, “The longer I do it, the better it gets.” The way Suchet keeps finding new little tics and eccentricities to keep the character fresh is a substantial feat, since around him, the fixtures and fittings of Agatha Christie-land have proved impregnable to change.Hallowe'en Party was published in 1969, but this comfortably upholstered TV treatment (with a screenplay by Mark Gatiss, currently working 25/8) had cloaked itself in the leafy security of the Home Read more ...
james.rampton
Miss Marple is frequently described as “a little old lady”, but for all that she casts a giant shadow. Just ask any new actress invited to portray this most beloved of characters. When you play the spinster sleuth, you have massive shoes to fill. That has certainly been Julia McKenzie’s experienceThe 68-year-old this week appeared for the first time in the part of Agatha Christie’s much-loved amateur detective. She took over the role from Geraldine McEwan, who retired last year after starring in twelve episodes as Miss Marple. McKenzie admits to jangling nerves beforehand. She was well aware Read more ...