No Miss Marple. No Poirot. But Agatha still keeps us transfixed
A gatha Christie wrote more than five dozen murder mysteries, plus scores of short stories and plays. But even a well that deep will run dry, leaving television a stark choice — to scrape or to remake.
remakes of the most celebrated tales are difficult, as Kenneth Branagh discovered last year with the umpteenth Murder On the Orient express. We know the twist, Ken.
scraping around for forgotten or underrated gems has its pitfalls, too. When Christie tried a novel without her star detectives, Poirot and Miss Marple, it was usually because she was attempting some risky experiment — or, worse, she was doing a spy thriller: ‘My name is Burned . . . hercule Burned!’
the three- part Ordeal By Innocence (BBC1) is based on one of those experiments. thankfully, there are no spies, but there are no familiar detectives, either. instead, we have a business mogul with a penchant for archaeology (Bill Nighy), and his hysterical, controlling wife (anna Chancellor), who adopts orphans and foundlings just to torment them.
in a fragmented opening scene, all blazing headlights and chiming clocks, someone bashes Mummy to death with an ornament. Just about everyone has blood on their clothes, and Daddy seems more concerned with comforting the maid ( Morven Christie) than calling an ambulance.
For the first 20 minutes, pieces of the story, adapted by sarah Phelps, rained around us like bits of broken glass. One of the grown-up children (anthony Boyle) was arrested and murdered in prison before he could be hanged. his sisters stood around his coffin in veils, anonymous as chess pieces, before gradually being revealed — with Poldark’s eleanor tomlinson among them.
and there was Christian Cooke as rough diamond Mickey, replacing alleged sex attacker ed Westwick, who has been airbrushed from the production with chilling efficiency.
Once the characters were established, the pace slowed, until this was barely more than a family bickering match. everyone was having flashbacks to childhood or injecting themselves with morphine.
But as the production threatened to stall, its engines sputtered to life. a murder witness turned up 18 months late, claiming implausibly to have been stranded in the arctic. and clues abounded: i particularly want to know why there was such emphasis on the women’s clothes — the funereal veils, the bridal gown that sparked a row, and Max ernst’s surrealist masterpiece attirement Of the Bride on the study wall. Until next week’s instalment, the little grey cells will be working overtime.
Less intriguing was a plod through a killing that’s had america agog, in Conspiracy Files: Murder in Washington (BBC2). Democratic election campaign staffer seth rich was shot dead in the street during the small hours in July 2016.
this documentary expected us to accept he was killed by robbers, and that to entertain other notions was to fall gullible victim to news fakery. But rich’s killer left his wallet, phone and watch. Meanwhile, someone in rich’s office had sent over 50,000 incriminating emails to Wikileaks — unless it was russian hackers.
in the absence of hard evidence that rich was assassinated by a Moscow hit squad, this report dismissed the possibility. it also mocked the conspiracists who pointed to the number of people who apparently meet sudden ends whenever Bill and hillary Clinton seem threatened.
this was an insipid way to investigate a murder. it was the tV equivalent of posting constables around a crime scene, crying, ‘ Move along, please. Nothing to see here!’