So sad that PBSis getting Agatha Christie

Lollipop

Is anyone else sad that Julia Mckenzie won't be Miss Marple anymore? She was getting better and better. Plus this Tommy and Tuppence idea doesn't really sound like anything I want to see. What i liked about the ITV series was how experimental and mature they made the stories. They took the stories i enjoyed as a teenager, and made them grow up with me. I didn't care for Joan Hickson, but both the other ladies were wonderful, and I don't want to deal with Tuppence or her stupid hats. PBSis going to make some completely uninspired, boring, by the numbers series which will hopefully flop. 

Tommy_A_Jones

I am sad that The Adaptations with Julia McKenzie didn't start getting good until her final series, (Geraldine McKewan's best series I thought was the 1st) but they couldn't really do anymore, It was Wrong that Miss Marple was in some she shouldn't be in and doing the short stories would have needed a lot of Changes so as there were no more Novel's left and I seem to be the only one who likes the idea of Miss Marple being put into SOME Poitot's or ITV doing what they did with Inspector Barnaby (Writing new ones) It is the right time to finish, I will know wether to have Confidence in And Then There Were None when I know who will be in it. I have been a Christie Fan for 30 years, another thing they could do which I personally would like is to do what ITV did with Sparkling Cyanide, as long as the spirit was kept and Modern motives weren't used my 2 suggestions could work.

GKCfan

I'm going to refrain from voicing my personal opinions (both positive and negative) on the TV adaptations right now.  I'm just saying that the new Partners in Crime Tommy and Tuppence series is produced by the BBC, and it's not clear at the moment of PBS is going to be involved at all.  The series may air in America first on Acorn TV, and some PBS stations may air a syndicated version, or it may be picked up for Masterpiece Mystery!  I don't think anything official has been announced yet.

Tommy_A_Jones

I think it will be on at Christmas.

Griselda

The most irritating aspect of television adaptations is the way they change the plot. Take the T.V. version of  'Murder at the Vicarage' with Geraldine McEwan. With great incongruity, a fictitious love affair between Jane Marple, and, I recall, a married soldier, was flash-backed, and the evolution of the relationship between the two murderers was was reconfigured to remove the significance of the age discrepancy between them, and the handsomeness of the male. 

Psychological insight is everything in Christie's work: if the director rewrites the motives, the whole thing tumbles down like one of Poirot's houses of cards. Agatha started her career with a touch of Sherlock Holmes: flamboyance and visual drama, and then focused in, more and more on the basic characters - the main types - and she moved away from aristocrats too.  For me the 1940s were her most effective decade, when her powers were at their height, and she knew her subject intimately, yet had gained some of the detachment which age brings to all the better critique and set in context the lives of her protaganists. I feel that she didn't quite understand the late 1960's, and the early novels were too greatly following conventions.

The Joan Hickson series was so long ago that, if Marple were to be re-dramatized, you could almost use Joan Hickson's treatment as a model, and just have fun re-casting suitable actors in the other roles. Few viewers would complain that the treatment was too similar.

Griselda

I wonder if Joanna David would like to play Miss Marple. She has that quietness which I associate with the genteel sleuth. She could do the hidden depths. I feel that there has to be an introverted quality to the actress playing the part.