Revealed: The killer in BBC’S Christie mystery
Whodathunkit? The final episode of Ordeal by Innoncence, the BBC’S adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1958 novel, delivered a thrilling surprise last night. Sarah Phelps, the screenwriter, had changed the identity of the killer of matriarch Rachel Argyll. It was revealed to be...
So there we have it. In the flashback-packed finale to Ordeal By Innocence (BBC One, Sunday), everyone in the Argyll household was carefully supplied with a motive to put an end to beastly materfamilias Rachel (Anna Chancellor). But in the end it was Leo (Bill Nighy) in the drawing room with the statuette of the jackal-headed Egyptian god Anubis. Of course it was. He was suspiciously passive.
The local detective being (a) corrupt and (b) dead, it was left to the family to mete out summary justice. Even though scriptwriter Sarah Phelps had spoken out about her changes to the story, the new denouement was quite a jolt. At the same time, the final image of Kirsten (Morven Christie) ignoring Leo’s howls was eerily familiar: his basement incarceration by the woman that he’d raped and impregnated was identical to the twist in a recent Inside No 9.
So Rachel’s nuclear bunker was provided with a plot role just in time. I don’t think it quite justified the gusts of atomic paranoia that permeated the story like a synthetic spray. Frustratingly the source of Rachel’s anxieties about the bomb went unexplored. “You won’t break me,” she warned the probing Jack in the second episode as he found out what made her tick. And she was proved dead right. While the script was very hot on the genetic source of Jack’s malignancy, it never disclosed why Rachel was quite such a Gorgon. Infertility and infidelity don’t quite cover it.
But what fun to watch Chancellor take command. Drugging, slapping, crushing, aborting – she was overdue her big moment. So was Christie who seized hers with heart-wrenching sincerity. “How did you bear it?” Jack asked, having discovered that she gave him away at birth. “I just did,” she said in a tiny voice. Anthony Boyle, an exceptional talent, was thrillingly equal to Jack’s wild fury and boyish vulnerability.
The delay occasioned by reshooting some sections after an enforced cast change meant that the queasy Christmas scenes lost some context. “I never really enjoy Christmas,” said Jack as things fell apart. “But this one is shaping up to be a real belter.” With its doomy soundtrack, gloomy visuals and the hyper-intense performances, this adaptation really was. Jasper Rees
The left-hand half of Ant and Dec has been absent from our screens since his welldocumented drink-driving arrest and return to rehab last month. As
Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, Saturday) returned for its 12th series, though, Anthony Mcpartlin was back at Declan Donnelly’s side. The audition episodes were recorded in January, before Mcpartlin’s troubles resurfaced. Donnelly will helm next month’s live shows solo but for now, it was a treat to see them in tandem.
As usual, streetdancers, choirs, cute youngsters and eccentric novelty acts dominated the contest. Dance troupe DVJ turned out to be an offshoot of the 2009 winners Diversity. Meanwhile, Japanese tablecloth trickster Mr Uekusa gave a routine that featured numerous ways of nearly-but-notquite unveiling his nudity. “Are you aware the winner of this contest gets to perform for the Royal Family?” asked Simon Cowell. “Of course,” deadpanned Uekusa, with just a square of red silk protecting his modesty.
Just when proceedings couldn’t get much dafter, two acts turned out to be unexpectedly moving. The Nhsbacked B-positive Choir, formed to encourage blood donation, delivered a soulful rendition of Andra Day’s Rise Up, but the tear-jerking crescendo came from magician Marc Spelmann, who constructed a mind-reading trick around his two-year-old daughter Isabella – born after five years of IVF and already a cancer survivor. Ant and Dec dashed onstage to press their golden buzzer, sending Spelmann through to the semi-finals. The fact that the celebrations were led by an emotional Mcpartlin, perhaps with his own parenting heartbreak in the back of his mind, made it more poignant.
Behind the judges’s table, BGT demonstrated the benefits of a settled panel. Cowell, Amanda Holden, Alesha Dixon and David Walliams have been a fixture for six years now. They have real chemistry and genuinely seem to like each other, and, the odd bit of viewer manipulation aside, this was precision-tooled entertainment. Infectious, uplifting and utterly irresistible. BGT is very good at creating communal moments. This opening episode was full of them, as well as a reminder of why Mcpartlin is much missed. Michael Hogan
Ordeal By Innocence ★★★★ Britain’s Got Talent ★★★★★