Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008)

television

Perhaps I’m just getting old and so more often find myself out of sympathy with television representations of the times from my youth. Although I failed to arrange being born into a rich family with a large country estate, we were on the periphery of the county set and I observed many people of the type we see on display in these period adaptations. The book on which Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008) is based was written and set in the 1950s and, as the title suggests, was another of these plots recycling nursery rhymes. At this point I need to distinguish between the source material and the most recent adaptation. I read this when it first came out in paperback around 1958 and, like many books by Agatha Christie, the actual characters are fairly irrelevant. They are the standard stereotypes who do what’s necessary to advance the plot. The basis of enjoyment lies in the rather nice construction of the puzzle. As is always the case when the reader is given a clue in the title, the question is whether the author is playing fair or the clue is actually a bluff. If it’s a bluff, whose bluff is it. The author could be setting out to mislead us from the moment we open the book or the murderer could be using the rhyme for a particular purpose. When I sat down to watch this, I confess I could not remember it. Many of the Agatha Christies have blurred together into a kind of generic lump of Golden Age Detective Fiction. Of all the authors who came to prominence in the 1920s and 30s, she proved to be the best at the mystery three-card-trick. You take a limited number of people, shuffle them around and then devise a set of circumstances in which a different person is the murderer for each book. It can even be everyone or the detective or, in one case, the first-person narrator. Everyone gets to play the part on the whim of the Queen of Crime. The result is there’s little memorable about the individual stories. What we tend to remember are the broad brushstrokes of the detectives and their immediate entourage, and occasional solutions which were outstandingly spectacular.

Ralf Little, Julia McKenzie and Matthew Macfadyen looking to investigate

So here we are with another actress drafted in to play Miss Marple (I suppose Geraldine McEwan was just a little too long in the tooth as she approached her 80th birthday). This time, we’re off with Julia McKenzie. For the record, Joan Hickson featured in an adaptation of this novel that was shown in 1985. So those of you with memories like an elephant or a comprehensive set of DVDs can compare interpretations. This strikes me a somewhat bland but, in part, that’s because she shares the detecting spotlight with Inspector Neele (Matthew Macfadyen) and his faintly comic sidekick Sergeant Pickford (Ralf Little). Perhaps if she was allowed the starring role, we might see her performance in a better light.

As to the plot, we start off with the murder of Rex Fortescue (Kenneth Cranham). Have you noticed how often Agatha Christie gets the ball rolling by killing a bullying patriarch? It’s probably terribly Freudian that these guys always deserve to die. They are usually slightly on the upper side of middle class, reasonably wealthy but ultimately convinced the rest of the world contains an inferior species. In this case, he’s somewhat loopy which is not a desirable mental state for a man running an investment bank. He’s been moving out of all the good, safe bonds into new derivatives and other casino style financial products. This has been driving his son Percival (Ben Miles) nuts. The family were watching their wealth go down the toilet but would the old boy listen? So they were rescued when someone poisoned the idiot and left the rye in his pocket. Naturally Miss Marple is not a little upset when her ex-maid is also slaughtered while hanging out the clothes in the garden. That just leaves the queen to die in the parlour and the rhyme is complete.

Rupert Grave as the black sheep of the family

The problem with this adaptation is that the characters are either the servants (the drunk butler and prickly cook) who are easy to spot, or generic wealthy middle class types, often with rather less middle class accents to show their feet of clay. Yes, wealthy people did marry beneath themselves in those days. A fact made embarrassingly obvious in this production by their low class accents and potentially boorish behaviour. And that’s what really depresses me about this adaptation. The class-based drama focuses on the pursuit of money and status. This unhappy shower may have acquired the money but they certainly have not acquired any manners to go with them. This is the noveau riche trying to live the life of the old money, upper class. Percival is the miser son, counting every penny. Lance Fortescue (Rupert Graves) flies in from Paris after his father’s death so he stands out a little as having a little more style. But then the black sheep of the family do tend to be charismatic.

Even though it relies on one person being extraordinarily stupid, I suppose the plot is one of the better ones with the way in which the evidence emerges staying true to the book. I’m going to reserve judgement on Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. We just don’t see enough of her in this episode. So A Pocket Full of Rye is reasonably entertaining for a show of this type if you can stand being cooped up with this group of rather unpleasant figures for two hours.

For reviews of other Agatha Christie stories and novels, see:

Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004) — the first three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2005) — the second set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2006) — the third set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2007) — the final set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Blue Geranium (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Caribbean Mystery (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Endless Night (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Greenshaw’s Folly (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Pale Horse (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Secret of Chimneys (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Big Four (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Case of the Missing Will (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Chocolate Box (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Clocks (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Curtain. Poirot’s Last Case (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Dead Man’s Folly (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Dead Man’s Mirror (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Elephants Can Remember (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hallowe’en Party (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Labours of Hercules (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Three Act Tragedy (2011)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Underdog (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Yellow Iris (1993)

Agatha Christie’s Marple (2007) — the final set of three episodes

television

Well, with the final three lined up, I can maintain my morale and keep going. After the first disasters, it’s been a terrible struggle to switch on the television. With a derisive laugh, I can always hope the broadcasters saved the best for the last set of three. Towards Zero is another of these adaptations which inserts Miss Marple (Geraldine McEwan) into the mystery. This is not necessarily an improvement on the Inspector Battle original, but it’s equally not necessarily a fatal flaw. A mystery is a mystery to be solved and this particular puzzle is quite elegant, no matter who does the sleuthing. The one good feature about this particular adaptation is the police officers who turn up to investigate the death that’s so obviously a murder are reasonably competent. They know to look for fingerprints and do search diligently for evidence. At times, they even ask intelligent questions when interviewing the select group of suspects. Their failure is to understand social dynamics of the people (who are not particularly likeable) and to see the significance of the summons from Lady Camilla’s room on the night she died. Incidentally, Eileen Atkins is rather pleasing as the reclusive old lady. It’s a shame she has to be bludgeoned to death. It makes a sad contrast with Tom Baker whose portrayal of Federick Treves tended to the grotesque. I suppose the whole thing worked quite well as entertainment although the drama of tipping poor Ted Latimer (Paul Nicholls) in the river was a bit over the top and the tennis match featuring Greg Rusedski and Neville Strange (Greg Wise) was tame. So, not that it’s in any sense a redemption for this series, this particular episode was one of the better ones. Perhaps we really will finish on a high note or two.

Eileen Atkins and Greg Wise

Ordeal By Innocence should have been better given the quality of the cast but, yet again, we have major tinkering with the original and poor direction. The result is that it’s rather difficult to distinguish between the adopted children. They all seem underdeveloped as characters. In the novel, there’s a better effort made to explore their individual personalities and, while this is not one of the best Christies, it does have a sound plot. Yet again Miss Marple has been inserted into the story and, worse, we have a change in the identity of the second victim and an unexpected suicide. Frankly, I fail to understand why the murderer should have chosen to kill Gwenda (Juliet Stevenson) and why add a twin only to have him disappear into the lake? Making any changes to the original should actually improve on the original, perhaps clarifying a weak point or making a dated element more meaningful to a modern audience. In this case, the result just feels muddled and, although the change to the ending does make quite a shrewd use of the book’s title, it’s the only ray of sunshine in this otherwise dismal swamp.

Juliet Stevenson when she was still engaged to be married

Looking back at a life wasted watching television, At Bertram’s Hotel has quite the most bizarrely confusing opening I can remember seeing in any sleuthing adaptation. The camera wanders around with Jane Marple bumping into people as the lobby of the hotel revolves around her and, supposedly, introduces all the main characters to us. In the original, the hotel has faded gentility. This has a Satchmo lookalike belting out a jazz number as the crowd from Piccadilly Circus, in town tonight, mills around without anyone to shout, “Stop”.* To say this is a re-imagining of the original novel is an understatement. Although the murder of Micky Gorman is reproduced with moderate reliability, the most fascinating aspect of the original has been thrown away, i.e. the actual purpose for the hotel remaining unchanged with the old folk lurking around the public rooms sipping tea.

Stephen Mangan as Inspector Bird on the roof with the body

The actual story we see on the screen with the twins, loopy renegades from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and black-market dealings in artwork is a travesty. What makes it all the more dire is the decision to share the work of detection with a maid, Jane Cooper (Martine McCutcheon) who shows up the bumbling Inspector Larry Bird (Stephen Mangan) and is rewarded with the chance to live with him at the end — presumably so she can solve more of his cases for him. This gives us another example of a very satisfying novel distorted out of recognition to no good effect.

Looking back at this series, I really cannot imagine why Granada Television felt the need to so completely rewrite most of the source novels. Agatha Christie was remarkably inventive and, while not always completely on target, she was rather better than the team of people lined up to write these adaptations. In this final case, the adaptation itself is made worse by the poor direction, not establishing a clear understanding of who everyone is supposed to be in the first half of the show. But the consistent problem has been Geraldine McEwan. It’s unfair to keep on harping about Joan Hickson whose portrayal of Miss Marple was magnificent. I suspect Joan Hickson was simply lucky to land in a team that respected the original intention of Agatha Christie and were prepared to go the extra mile to support the harder, more predatory interpretation. It would have been just as easy to find Joan Hickson left high and dry in dismal adaptations or surrounded by melodramatically-inclined actors. When you actually examine Geraldine McEwan’s view of Miss Marple, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of her hiding behind the mask of senile incompetence. But she should let it slip every now and again so we can all be in on the joke. As it is, the directors did little or nothing to bend the fourth wall to let us see the “real” Miss Marple at work. The result is a view of this character as rather dotty, often lurking in the background and not infrequently relying on others to do the work for her. Indeed, on many occasions, there’s very poor continuity where sidekicks talk with someone or see something significant but are never seen reporting what was heard or seen to our sleuth. Obviously, some kind of telepathy is involved. So apart from one or two episodes, there’s very little to recommend. If you have the choice, buy the DVD set of the earlier Joan Hickson versions.

For reviews of other Agatha Christie stories and novels, see:

Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004) — the first three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2005) — the second set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2006) — the third set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Blue Geranium (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Caribbean Mystery (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Endless Night (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Greenshaw’s Folly (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Pale Horse (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Secret of Chimneys (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Big Four (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Case of the Missing Will (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Chocolate Box (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Clocks (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Curtain. Poirot’s Last Case (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Dead Man’s Folly (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Dead Man’s Mirror (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Elephants Can Remember (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hallowe’en Party (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Labours of Hercules (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Three Act Tragedy (2011)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Underdog (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Yellow Iris (1993)

Agatha Christie’s Marple (2005) — the second set of three episodes

television

With a sense of foreboding, I sat down to watch this second set of three Marple adaptations. We had not exactly started off auspiciously and I had visions of Agatha Christie vaguely stirring in her grave as broadcast signals slowly penetrated the soil around her grave. The first effort is A Murder Is Announced. We’re back in a village circa the 1950s, this one appropriately named Chipping Cleghorn, where someone obviously well-meaning announces the imminent death of person or persons unknown. Come the appointed time, the lights go out, shots ring out and, not surprisingly, a man is duly found dead. Giving up her quiet holiday in a nearby hotel, Miss Marple invites herself into the middle of the investigation and, before long, she’s suggesting lines of inquiry to the random office officer in charge. It’s a wonderful commentary on these pre-CSI times that we could innocently believe our British police officers were so accessible and willing to give credence to an old biddy’s ideas. You can’t see an author today describing anything other than a highly professional squad that appears and erects barriers to keep curious eyes away. Not forgetting the Crown Prosecution Service lurking in the wings to ensure a fair trial will be possible. The notion of gathering all the suspects in the library for sherry and an accusation or two would be frowned on. Yet, that’s the Golden Age paradigm. We meet the cast of suspects, watch the sleuth at work and then arrive at the dénouement in which our detective reviews the evidence, highlights the clues and points the fickle finger of fate at the baddie(s).

Zoë Wanamaker, Geraldine McEwan and Elaine Paige in A Murder Is Announced

Let’s characterise this series as a race between Geraldine McEwan and Joan Hickson. The new team wants to distance itself from the earlier series. It wants this set of adaptations to be better. So they have no compunction in rewriting the books to make for “better” television. Yet one of the more extraordinary aspects of this adaptation is that the production team neglected to do anything about Mitzi (Catherine Tate). The 1950s was a time of great parochialism and hostility to all foreigners, particularly if they were coloured. Indeed, in the next episode, Sleeping Murder, a seaside town is thrown into a paranoid frenzy when a person of Indian origin is seen on the promenade — ironically, something that did not happen in the original novel. Anyway, Mitzy who cooks and “does for” the family is an appalling caricature and it would have been better to avoid pandering to our current anti-immigration prejudices by toning down the performance. That the script leaves out characters from the book, overeggs the relationship between Hinch and Murgatroyd, and actually has Miss Marple cry when she comes across a body, shows the production team has no compunction about changing stuff. In this case, I’m not convinced this does justice to the book but, in its own terms, it does manage to focus on the core mystery which remains ingenious. Zoë Wanamaker and Elaine Page are quite pleasing as Letitia Blacklock and Dora Bunner.

Sophia Myles, Aidan McArdle and Geraldine McEwan in Sleeping Murder

A Sleeping Murder is one of these deeply annoying adaptations of a novel in which we’re expected to accept the extraordinary as complete ordinary. Although Sophia Myles does her best as Gwenda Halliday, her arrival in this particular house in this particular village is such an amazing contrivance made worse by the ability of Aidan McArdle as Hugh Hornbeam to pick up a telephone and summon Miss Marple at the first sign of hysteria. Quite what possessed the production team to murder a reasonably good book with this farrago of rubbish is beyond me. In the original, Ms Halliday is newly married and arrives from New Zealand. There’s no connection to India, no Hugh Holliday as a love interest, and no Funnybones at the end of the pier where, quite frankly, they should all have sunk without trace since sorting out their relationships is hardly entertaining. The only good thing about this episode was the quality of the singing by Sarah Parish and Anna-Louise Plowman.

Anthony Andrews, Geraldine McEwan and Greta Scacchi in By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Then as if the producers decided to go for death by a thousand cuts, we move on to the even more annoying adaptation of By The Pricking of My Thumbs. I didn’t believe this lot would go for complete butchery but this is the case here. This is a perfectly respectably Tommy and Tuppence novel, a series in which Agatha Christie would let her hair down a little and write a more thrillerish, atmospheric book. There would always be a basic puzzle to unravel, but she was always aiming for a greater spirit of adventure than ever would have surrounded the semi-geriatric Jane Marple. For those of you who have yet to dip into one of these books, Tommy works for MI6 and, together with his wife Tuppence, they catch nazi spies during the war and are involved in other faintly daring-dos. For the record, they are equally bright and tend to strike sparks off each other until they arrive at the “answer”. In this mockery, we have Tuppence (Greta Scacchi) as an alcoholic wife left on the shelf by an absentee Tommy (Anthony Andrews). In a visit to a nursing home to visit Tommy’s aunt, Tuppence meets Miss Marple and, in due course, they set off the investigate the goings-on in Farrell St Edmund. When Tommy does appear, he’s played as a pompous idiot who uses the threat of instant incarceration in the Tower if anyone fails to answer one of his questions. Not even the joy of seeing Steven Berkoff and Leslie Phillips can prevent this from being the worst in this Marple series so far.

For reviews of other Agatha Christie stories and novels, see:

Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004) — the first three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2006) — the third set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2007) — the final set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Blue Geranium (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Caribbean Mystery (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Endless Night (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Greenshaw’s Folly (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Pale Horse (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Secret of Chimneys (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Big Four (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Case of the Missing Will (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Chocolate Box (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Clocks (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Curtain. Poirot’s Last Case (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Dead Man’s Folly (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Dead Man’s Mirror (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Elephants Can Remember (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hallowe’en Party (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Labours of Hercules (2013)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Three Act Tragedy (2011)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Underdog (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Yellow Iris (1993)