It’s hardly Miss Marple: BBC adds f-words, rape and violence to Agatha Christie tale
A BBC version of a classic Agatha Christie tale is set to shock audiences with foul language, an attempted rape and police brutality that were never included in the writer’s original story.
The scenes in the new adaptation of The Witness For The Prosecution – starring Kim Cattrall as a wealthy widow – are all the invention of scriptwriter Sarah Phelps.
Ms Phelps caused controversy last Christmas by adding swearing and drugtaking to another Christie thriller, And Then There Were None. But it proved a hit with audiences, attracting almost ten million viewers.
Her version of The Witness For The Prosecution, which also stars Andrea Riseborough, Toby Jones and David Haig, is similarly dark, and doesn’t shy away from using the f-word as it explores the psychological impact on those caught up in the trial after Ms Cattrall’s character is murdered.
However, experts insist that the new drama is true to the spirit of the original 1925 short story.
Christie scholar Dr Jamie Bernthal said: ‘Agatha Christie was hugely aware of all this stuff that we maybe don’t traditionally connect to her stories. She wrote about sex and she wrote about drugs and domestic violence.
‘Her stories are incredibly dark and clued up about the horrors in the world. But she wrote in an age where things couldn’t be made very explicit.’
Agatha Christie’s The Witness For The Prosecution is on BBC1 at 9pm on Boxing Day and December 27.