Agatha Christie VS ITV
British productions have managed to attain an aura of superior quality and intelligence in the eyes of TV audiences around the world. It’s why many shows that would be derided as dull and downright ridiculous end up being considered quality TV. Well, as people who had the misfortune of seeing several of ITV's Agatha Christie adaptations (Agatha Christie's Poirot and Agatha Christie's Marple), we’d like to put forth the notion that a British accent and crappy TV aren’t mutually exclusive.
Like in any adaptation, changes must be made, but it’s clear some were only made in a misguided attempt to appeal to modern viewers. Action sequences were added to some of the stories, like in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (2000) presumably to make things more exciting. Stories were also sexed up for no apparent reason, like The Mystery of the Blue Train (2006), which changed the thieving and murdering duo into a couple of perverts who get off on murder.
Sexual orientations are a lot more diverse than they originally were. While some of it may have been present in Christie’s books in more subtle ways, the adaptations went a lot further. For instance, in The Body in the Library (2004), the writers actually changed the culprit so that a lesbian couple rather than a straight one was responsible for the murder. Yay representation?
While the adaptations of The Body in the Library, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and even The Mystery of the Blue Train kept the main plot relatively close to the original, the same can’t be said of Appointment with Death (2009). Here, the murderer went from being a woman who wanted to protect her reputation to a woman who wanted revenge for the abuse of the illegitimate daughter she’d been forced to give away. Why? What was the point of this change? Cards on the Table (2006) kept Dr Roberts as the main culprit, but for some no doubt stupid reason switched Anne and Rhoda’s roles, making Rhoda the murderer. Again, why? People who read the book won’t like it, and people who didn’t won’t care. Oh, and be warned that these adaptations have what must be some of the worst American accents ever committed to film.
The previous adaptations were from Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989 - 2013), but Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004 – 2013), deviated even more from Christie’s originals, sometimes hilariously so. The series also decided to stick Miss Marple in stories where she didn’t belong. The leads in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? were just a one-off, but the same can’t be said of Tuppence and Tommy, who had their own series, and ended up being sidelined in By the Prickling of My Thumbs. The latter is particularly frustrating, because the writers rightly ditched most of the spy stuff, which Christie tended to keep annoyingly vague, and focused more on the creepy old lady saying creepy things about a past crime. Oh, and thank you, ITV, for turning smart, resourceful Tuppence into a helpless half-drunk idiot because apparently all the Miss Marple stories Agatha Christie wrote weren’t enough for you. Not that Tommy fared any better, but at least he was kept off screen for most of it. Ugh!
For some reason, At Bertram’s Hotel (2007) added fugitive Nazis and stolen art. It also made the killer an overly dedicated friend and her mother a Nazi hunter rather than a thief. We can at least understand why they added that subplot even if we think it was unnecessary, but the change in motivation made no sense. Elvira can be a murderer, but she can’t have done it because she wanted to marry a greedy man? Is there any method to this madness or were the writers in some sort of competition to see who could make the most stupid changes to the original plots?
If you haven’t watched Agatha Christie’s Marple’s adaptation of Murder is Easy (2009), we urge you to do so. Christie’s original story doesn’t feature Miss Marple and is the story of a crazy woman framing some guy who dumped her ages ago for a string of murders he didn’t commit. The writers of this version decided that that wasn’t good enough and to liven things up included an incestuous rape. Yes, really. So now the murderess was raped by her mentally handicapped brother and left the resulting baby to die. When her now adult child shows up in the village, she starts killing everyone who knew what happened to protect her daughter. WTF?! Who reads an Agatha Christie mystery and thinks “You know how this could be better? If we added a secret incest rape baby!”? What were the writers on when they came up with that? And why the hell did they decide to make the murderer sympathetic?
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2009) turned the main investigating duo into idiots so that Miss Marple had something to do. It also made the culprits a brother/sister duo who wanted to get revenge on their biological mother for having left them behind in China after the Japanese invasion. The brother was sent to an orphanage and the sister was given to Japanese soldiers to be abused. Ookay... We don’t remember everything about the original plot, but we’re fairly certain it didn’t include that.
Yes, some of the other episodes are good, but these are such absolute crap that it’s baffling to see Agatha Christie’s Marple show up in Best Agatha Christie Adaptations lists. Also, we’re pretty sure that if Americans had been the ones to mangle Dame Agatha’s classic tales like this, reactions would’ve been a lot different. Is it the accent? It must be the accent.