Murder Is Easy

This production did not get off to a promising start when, despite being set in 1954, a copy of the Racing Post, a publication not established until 1986, is dropped on the floor of the train. The bizarre scene in the black community centre which focused on the negative aspects of colonialism in an attempt to insert current race politics into the narrative added nothing of value to the plot. In Fact, it only made it seem all the more implausible that in 1954 no-one bats an eyelid when a black man walks into their village and starts poking his nose into their affairs. Ditto the pub scenes. A thin premise is also contrived to shoehorn a couple of Asians in to the cast to tick another diversity box. At one point a red kite is seen swooping on the main character which would have been impossible in the 1950s since these birds were virtually extinct in the UK at that time. Death after death after death occurs in the village and none of the surviving villagers seem particularly bothered at all. In fact, the whole thing had the feel of a rather mediocre low budget amateur dramatic production which, while it lacked any real depth or substance, was certainly not short of garish colours for some reason. The actor playing Lord Whitfield in particular hammed the character up to a ridiculous level. The narrative was slow, tedious, completely lacking in suspense and punctuated with frequent lengthy silences which were presumably necessary to fill out the running time to the required 2 hours rather than the 45 minutes the salient elements of the rather weak script might have filled. It was a real shame that by far the best actor in the whole thing had her character killed off after only 8 minutes. The person who wrote the screenplay for this, who has an almost unreadable foreign name, and the Indian director, clearly do not have any understanding of the sort of traditional English culture and customs that Agatha Christie's novels are steeped in. I am a huge fan of Christie's work but this has to be one of the worst adaptations I have yet seen.

Agatha Christie wrote many dozens of murder mysteries, some famously ingenious; but either 'Murder is Easy' was a dud, or this adapatation is badly screwed up. People start dying in a small English village, but everyone still alive is remarkably unperturbed and several seem not to care if they're suspected to be the killer. Eventually, the real culprit is unearthed, and explains exactly how they've done it, although our amateur detective hero has identified the villain without in fact piecing any of it together for themselves. I've seen Christie adaptations that were fun, preposterous, or anachronistic; but none as anemic as this.

This BBC adaptation of a story by Agatha Christie opens with Luke Fitzwilliam, a recent arrival from Nigeria, heading to London to take up a job in Whitehall. On the train he meets an elderly woman who tells him that she is heading to Scotland Yard to report a series of murders in her home village. She claims local authorities are treating the deaths as accidents and that a prominent member of the local society is behind the deaths. Shortly after getting to London the woman is killed in a hit and run 'accident'. A delay in starting his job leads Fitzwilliam to head to the village to see what he can uncover. Various suspicious characters soon emerge. I have not read the book but am informed by somebody that has that this follows the central ideas fairly well. There are some changes of course; originally Fitzwilliam wasn't Nigerian... this change inevitably led the BBC to shoehorn in some of its own politics but overall I liked the character, mostly due to David Jonsson's performance in the role. The rest of the cast, which includes plenty of familiar faces, is solid. The makers nicely capture the feel of '50s England, or at least that which we are familiar with from other films and series. There are a good number of suspects and the identity of the killer doesn't become obvious too long before the final reveal. A slight quibble that many viewers won't even notice, at one point our protagonist is mobbed by a red kite... a species that one would be highly unlikely to see in '50s England, unlike today. Overall an enjoyably murder mystery.

I was looking forward to this and really expected to enjoy it as I've liked other BBC TV adaptations of past. However, this one just fell well short of expectations unfortunately. Let's break down why: 1. The acting is not good by and large, even the respectible actors pull in a below than average performance. 2. The budget seems really low, even for the BBC. Everything looks cheap and amateur. 3. The story. It really felt more of a pantomime than a murder mystery and apparent social commentary. There were some scenes that were genuinely laughable for all the wrong reasons. All in all, very disappointing, such a shame as was expecting much better.