Quick, Nurse! The Television Screens!

What would the late unlamented Mary Whitehouse, bane of British television for umpteen decades, founder of the Festival of Light and general right-wing ratbag extraordinaire, have made of the new series of Marple (no longer “Miss”)? How would she have reacted to the morally corrupting influence of a programme in which the elderly spinster from St Mary Mead had an affair with a married man (albeit forty years before)? To the fact that in an updated version of “The Body in the Library” the murderous couple are now lesbians? More to the point, how does it compare to the classic series starring Joan Hickson?

As one would expect, given that the Hickson series began in 1984 with “The Body in the Library” and ended in 1992 with “The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side” and was shot on a BBC budget (i.e. strong scripts but often shoddy special effects), the McEwan series is visually much more attractive. The Hickson stories were mainly shot in a realistic and down-to-earth style, particularly evident in the interior scenes in “A Caribbean Mystery” and “The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side”, which could have come straight out of one of the early Inspector Morse or Wexford episodes. Stories like “A Murder is Announced” and “A Pocket Full of Rye”, probably the two best the series produced, were well directed throughout, the latter in particular setting up quite a frightening atmosphere (as, to its credit, did “Caribbean”), and “Sleeping Murder” has some interesting directorial flourishes in the scenes where the heroine – played with an atrocious New Zillund accent by Geraldine Alexander – believes the house she has bought is being haunted. In contrast, one of the strengths of the Granada productions has always been the fact that each series has a distinct visual theme: Gothic melodrama for the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes stories and Art Nouveau for Poirot (to the point where it was so stylised that it irritated, particularly in episodes like “The Theft of the Royal Ruby”, which, to suit its Dickensian Christmas atmosphere, should have been set in an ancestral manor, and “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”). Like the 2003 / 2004 series of Poirot , however, Marple is less consciously stylised – the period trappings (1950s rather than the Poirotian mid-1930s) are present but in the background rather than jumping out at the viewer with loud protestations that it's oozing more style than the corpse is blood. Twenty-first century technology (and almost certainly a larger budget) means that the picture is clearer and sharper, that tricks can be played with light and montage – witness the panning used in “The Murder at the Vicarage”, where each scene in the solution blurs into the next. What we see on the screen looks great – but what about the story and the acting? Are they any good?

Well, yes and no. The first episode, “The Body in the Library”, written by Kevin Elyot (who also wrote two of the strongest episodes of Poirot for a decade, “Death on the Nile” and “Five Little Pigs”) and directed by Andy Wilson (known for Gormenghast, The Forsyte Saga , “Death on the Nile” and the last episode in the McEwan series, “4.50 from Paddington”) was a mixed success when it first appeared in Britain – nearly all the reviews on IMDB are negative, but the newspapers seem to have recognised both the wheat and the chaff, singling out McEwan's performance for special praise from the pantomime performances. The Financial Times ( 17 th December 2004 ), for instance, thought that “Marple did not seem sure whether it was playing for laughs or not, so it veered wildly from poignant moment to high farce and then to investigative insight”, but said that “McEwan [was] in wonderful form”. Perhaps the most negative review was that of the BBC (who may well have considered their 1980s version the definitive one), very wittily written in the persona of Joanna Lumley's Dolly Bantry and suggesting that the whole cast and crew were a mob of alcoholics:

And a marvel to see that old friend of ours, Day-For-Night Filming – which I hadn't seen since the Children's Film Foundation in the 70s. So nice to be getting work again – though one cad suggested that it was because we'd drunk away the budget! Cruel, cruel, cruel…

Anyway, I really must attend to the garden. The begonias are divine at this time of year! But before I hurry off my dears, one little secret – yes, you were correct. Every time Jane and I were having a cup of tea, there was gin in it!

(For the full review, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/cult/2004/12/13/15999.shtml. The BBC announced the programme by saying that it was unlikely that Joan Hickson would regenerate into Geraldine McEwan and that Paul McGann would not be appearing. Kudos to those who spot the reference!)

It is certainly true that there's a lot to be desired, particularly when it comes to the cast. Ian Richardson (playing the crippled financier Conway Jefferson – thankfully not introduced with the electronic flatulence the BBC Radiophonic Workshop borrowed from Doctor Who 's Davros, insane creator of the Daleks) and James Fox (Colonel Bantry, in whose l. the b. of the dancer Jefferson was planning to adopt was found) are both under-used. Joanna Lumley is vastly entertaining as Mrs Bantry, although seems to be playing the character as a cross between the corset-obsessed flapper in Cold Comfort Farm and Ab Fab 's Patsy, notably in a scene where she eyes an Argentine gigolo with whom she's just been dancing:

“Oh, that was marvellous! It was – it was like dancing with Astaire! Ooh, look! He's blushing! Isn't that sweet? Oh, he was telling me all about Argentina and the family ranch and the cattle and the hustling – or do I mean rustling? Ha ha ha! Anyway, he's apparently marvellous on a horse. Oh, look! He's blushing again! Ha ha ha!”

Simon Callow's Colonel Melchett goes from over the top to flamboyantly, jaw-droppingly camp (“playing the chief constable as if he were in panto at the Bournemouth civic centre,” the FT thought, while the BBC wondered whether “it was piles or a St Vitus Dance he was suffering from during filming? One just can't tell! But, how divine to see him literally hopping from foot to foot during his scenes, seemingly longing for the lavatory – which had been probably stuffed with a fake body and burnt down. Probably by lesbians! Oh, simply divine!”) – a marvel of overacting only rivalled in the Christie canon by Donald Sinden's Colonel Race in the BBC Radio version of Death on the Nile , where he chewed the scenery good and hard with his delivery of such lines as “ Blllaaack -mail!” and “ My God, the fellow's an Anglo-Catholic!!!” Particularly noteworthy is the scene where Colonel Melchett learns that the murderers are lesbians and his world crumbles about him: “But…one doesn't come across such things!” As Miss Marple points out, “Well, maybe not a lot in Much Benham, but there is a world beyond, you know.” Even though quite a few people (including those who launched a petition urging potential viewers to “boycott” the programme) seem to wish there weren't.

Despite worries that the lesbianised “Body” (a perfect title for a post-modern feminist critique of the gendered subjective corpus) would be a dismal failure, the story still hangs together very well. Of course, this doesn't reflect very well on Christie. Although The Body in the Library has been called one of her masterpieces (c.f. Barzun and Taylor's Catalogue of Crime , Robert Barnard's A Talent to Deceive ), it is actually one of Christie's weaker works, mainly because the characters are very flat (compare their one-dimensional characterisation with the characters in other 1940s books such as Five Little Pigs, The Hollow or Taken at the Flood ) and because it's one of her few pure detection (i.e. lots of policemen and not much amateur sleuthing) stories, a form which needs a strong plot to bolster it up. Unfortunately, as the changed ending reveals, the plot is thin. Normally changing the identity of the murderers in a Christie novel would wreck the plot – try, if you like, rewriting Death on the Nile or Hercule Poirot's Christmas without the yarn unravelling and falling about your feet in a messy confusion – but here it doesn't change anything. One feels that Body was Christie's contribution to the war effort, using a War Economy Standard-type plot: the murderers' plot gives an alibi not only to the two guilty parties but also to two innocent people, one of whom has the same motive as the murderer. In short, the identity of one of the murderers is essentially arbitrary, which makes for a weak story.

The second episode, an adaptation of Miss Marple's debut novel The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), is much better – except for a staggering lapse in taste in the last minute. Whereas McEwan made very little impression in the first episode, she comes into her own here. The opening sequence of the film, set in December 1915, shows a young Jane Marple bidding farewell to her lover, a married soldier, going off to the WWI front. The producers' decision to give Miss Marple a past and to remake her as a sexual being (although its novelty may only be in its outspokenness; Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple was helped in her investigations by a librarian played by her real-life husband Stringer Davis, and we learn in At Betram's Hotel that Miss Marple was in love with an unsatisfactory young man in her youth) means that she is no longer the somewhat starched figure of the books or the Hickson series, but more human, more approachable. We see her flirting with policemen; we see her friendship with the wife of the unpleasant Colonel Protheroe (Derek Jacobi) and with Mrs Price-Ridley (Miriam Margoyles); and we see a more sympathetic understanding of people, evident both in a scene where she understands the loneliness that led one of the villagers to write a poison-pen letter and in another where she discusses Mrs Protheroe's affair with a young artist with her (and is thanked “for not judging me”), as well as in the final scene where she sympathises with the murderer – but does not condone their action:

“When you came out of the shed with him, you were the same woman. You hadn't said goodbye for ever to the man you loved.”

“You could tell that?”

“You think I've never – I lost someone in a war who got a medal for dying. His wife will have cherished it.”

“His wife? … Easier for you, then, Jane. He was dead. You didn't have to choose between right and wrong.”

Of course Miss Marple did choose – to say farewell to her lover on the station platform and walk away, never to see him again – although she still has his photograph. The more sympathetic Miss Marple is quite a contrast to Joan Hickson's character. Despite the bird-like tilt of her head and her twinkling eyes, Hickson's Miss Marple isn't as sweet as she's remembered. There's a strength under that cardigan which Christie seldom touched upon, except perhaps in Nemesis (1972), where the detective is compared to the Greek goddess of retribution and adopts as her motto Amos 5:24: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream.” She also has an almost ghoulish fascination with evil, as though it is her moral duty to combat it because it holds a secret attraction for her – the scene in A Pocket Full of Rye where she quotes Job 24 (“The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief”) over the dead body of the maid always sends shivers down my spine. In a way, Hickson's Marple seems to be fuelled by an almost Old Testament sense of righteous anger, insisting on the punishment of the wicked, while McEwan shows a more New Testament pity and understanding. (An interesting thesis could be written on representations of detection and the fate of the murderer in British detective stories, and how they are coloured by religious attitudes.) We haven't seen this dark side of the character in McEwan's more likeable portrayal yet, although it will be interesting to see what she does with Nemesis .

Back, however, to “Murder at the Vicarage”. The story is lively and well-written, and sticks fairly closely to the book, with a good cast – Tim McInnerny of Blackadder fame as the vicar, Rachael Stirling (Diana Rigg's daughter) as his wife, Mark Gatiss as a neurotic curate, Miriam Margoyles as one of Mrs Price-Ridley and Herbert Lom as a French professor – doing justice to Stephen Churchett's script. The problem, though, is not merely whether justice should be done, but whether it should be seen to be done . The final scene rather unnecessarily shows the murderer being hanged. The UK abandoned capital punishment forty odd years ago so it can't be intended as a statement against such a barbarian practice. Two of the most recent episodes of Poirot – “Five Little Pigs” and “Sad Cypress” – took place under the shadow of the noose, but this was a dramatic necessity , since both stories were concerned with miscarriages of justice. The heroine in each film is arrested and sentenced for a crime they did not commit. “Cypress” was a race against time to save Elizabeth Dermot-Walsh, accused of poisoning her rival in love, from the gallows, while Rachael Stirling was hanged for the murder of her artist husband in the opening sequence of “Pigs” after leaving a note to her daughter stating her innocence, bringing Poirot into the case fourteen years later to discover whether Stirling's character was innocent or not. In “Vicarage”, however, the depiction of the hanging was both dramatically unnecessary, since it contributes nothing either to the story or to our understanding of the characters, and in bad taste, because it spoils our enjoyment of what had been an entertaining and interesting tale.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is showing “A Murder is Announced”, widely believed to be the best of the series, on Sunday night. Since the quality of each episode seems to be exponentially better than the last, I have to confess that the week is rather dragging its heels towards Miss Marple Hour…

For more information on the series http://geraldinemcewan.com/Miss Marple.html.