7 new TV adaptations agreed for BBC One
Tuppence
City of London, United Kingdom
Agatha Christie Productions Ltd and BBC One have cemented a unique production deal that will see Agatha Christie Ltd‘s production arm deliver seven new Christie adaptations over the next four years and will begin by working with leading indie Mammoth Screen on the first of these adaptations.
The first novel to be adapted is one of Agatha Christie's personal favourites, Ordeal by Innocence, followed by a ground-breaking murder mystery set in Ancient Egypt, Death Comes As The End.
Which other adaptations would you like to see?
Read the full story here: http://www.agathachristie.com/news/2016/seven-new-christie-dramas-promised-in-deal-with-bbc
Tagged:
Comments
Of course, in my dream world, Francesca Annis and James Warwick would reprise their roles of Tommy & Tuppence in new adaptations of N or M, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and Postern of Fate.
I have not read Crooked House, Towards Zero, or The Man in the Brown Suit yet, but from what I hear, they might also be turned into some interesting tv movies.
http://deadline.com/2012/07/sony-pictures-worldwide-acquisitions-buys-into-agatha-christies-crooked-house-297940/
I haven't heard anything else about it since. But with the new Witness For The Prosecution (with Ben Affleck directing and starring) and Murder On The Orient Express (with Kenneth Branaugh doing likewise) films hitting the big screen I'm sure Crooked House will as well. If not the big screen it might be a part of the 7 film deal with BBC One.....or it might hit both.
But what worries me are the unnecessary liberties these films might have -- modernizing, adding senseless scenes which Agatha Christie would never write in her books
Also please post more on the forum P_Lombard. Would love to hear more interesting insight and discussion from another Christie fan since the forum isn't quite as busy as before.
I think some of the other Christie works that could be perfect for these new TV adaptations are Crooked House (which is Christie's other personal favorite). I've been wanting to see a new TV version of this novel because it never has been done before. Also it would be intriguing to see the odd Leonides family portrayed on TV but more importantly because of its shocking ending (Spoiler alert) the 11 year old child Josephine as the killer. Considering how in today's society this particular ending is shockingly true and disturbing. Other Christie novels that I think they should do as well are Sparkling Cyanide (which I remember seeing as an American TV movie set in modern-day America and I didn't really like the actors in that one). Other ones they should do are Murder is Easy, Endless Night, and a TV version of The Mousetrap/Three Blind Mice. All of the Poirot novels and most of the stories have been done and so have the the Marple novels. I think they should focus on the stand-alone Christie novels especially ones that were done on the Marple series which to me was a bad idea to do.
Destination Unknown and They Came to Baghdad seem like very similar novels (both are international spy thrillers where evil schemes for world domination lurk beneath false philanthropy): it was not very surprising to learn from John Curran's Murder in the Making that elements of the two plots were originally entwined when Christie was planning these novels. So I am not sure it would be the best idea to release movie versions of these two novels back to back. Of the two, I think They Came to Baghdad is much stronger in terms of plot, humor, and characters. They Came to Baghdad was a fun read and I think that the story already has everything necessary to make a good movie. Destination Unknown would be greater challenge because the novel is driven more by its themes than its plot. For a movie version to work, it would really have to embrace the novel's emphasis on the gullibility of geniuses, the danger of utopian thought, the celebration of normality, and the emotional journey of Hillary Craven.
Sparkling Cyanide is a rather problematic novel, both in terms of plot and characters. The solution depends on a plot point which some readers consider highly improbable. The novel has some interesting characters (the Farradays, Ruth Lessing, George Barton, and Drakes), but spends too much time on some less interesting characters (Anthony Browne, Iris Marle, and Colonel Race). It would probably work fine as a movie, but it just is not a novel I would place high on my list of books I think deserve a good movie version.
I do admire this novel for those psychological elements, and the way that a change in this female character's thinking is hinted at so the reader could just about have guessed her to be involved. But to make a good screen version, I think the director might have to carefully establish the social setting. I feel that Agatha Christie was out of her depth with it. These characters, Rosemary and her husband and their crowd seem, rather than English, American (if anything) in their lifestyle: glamorous and rich and smooth. Agatha Christie's middle class characters are usually scatty and shabbily well-heeled like those who appear in a novel from a similar era, in At Bertram's Hotel: one senses that Agatha Christie knew these sorts of people and the things they would say very well. There is lacking the little mannerisms and habits which give insight into personality; instead there is an atmosphere of blandness around the family members, including the mother of the murderer. I think it would be good to give this family a particular identity. Not just any businessman, Rosemary's husband could be a racing driving mogul or something, and the film could have some interesting visual scenes.
The killer in this novel is the typical sociopath in psychology, similar to the one in The Body in the Library, Endless Night, Taken at the Flood, etc, and Christie involves him in the story quite well, always showing what he does rather than putting the reader inside his head.
Major Sparkling Cyanide Spoilers: I was referring to the suspects changing their place at the dinner table. John Curran in the Secret Notebooks complains: "However, some reservation remains as to the feasibility of the scheme. Is it really likely, especially in view of the subsequent investigation, that no one notices the incorrect seating arrangement vital to the success of of the plot? The preparation and mechanics of this are masterly and the telling of it is very daring (re-read Book I, Chapter 2 and admire the audacity of even the name) but while the concept is undoubtedly clever, the practical application of it is somewhat doubtful." (223) A long while back, there was a debate on a version of this website about whether or not this plot point was tenable. As I recall, most of the commentators voted no, but a few said it was tenable if all the suspects had drunk a bit too much.
Richard Symington was well-cast and played. He was presented as being in his late30s, early 40s, and looked settled and respectable but spruce and well-preserved enough to be attractive to a good looking young woman, and still vital, one felt. There was no attempt on the part of the directors to style the character as excessively nerdy, and as an uptight professional man. The actors seemed to understand their characters, and to respond with subtle nuance to anything another character said. There were slight changes to the dialogue from the book, but sympathetically done and showing a deep understanding of what is going on between the characters.
I was struck that, in a sense, the standards for drama were lower then in terms of creating a spectacle. There was no necessity to chintz up the sitting room and the antiques and make it a sensory delight of velvet and chinking delicate china. No desire to present the past as another world of another time, as an alien zone like a trip down the rabbit hole into wonderland. It felt, in these 1980s productions, as if the directors were educated in social history and instinctively knew how life was like in the decade in which AC had set the story: they sensed a continuity from the past into their present. I wonder today if directors do read widely at all:- we know that certain ones have owned to not having read Agatha Christie books before.
In the Hickson version of 'The Moving Finger' there is no self-conscious wondering, as it were, on the part of the director, about what will this bit look like to the audience; what will they be thinking of this and how can we build in an awareness of their possible response to our direction. For instance, the scene in which Symington carries an unconscious Megan down to the kitchen is awkward because you can see her backside sticking up clad in pyjamas, and you think the actor might wobble carrying her over his shoulder, down all those stairs, but, even so, there is no sort of second guessing by the directors about what a perceived fickle and easily-bored audience might be thinking, e.g., deciding to have Symington puffing or panting or stumbling, or having him be coy about handling her and touching her. They just do the scene. It is as if the directors are saying, 'Look, this is what it says in the book, so this is what we are doing. It will have to be ok.' The presumption seems to be that it is there to entertain, it probably will entertain, and they have done a workmanlike job with it. Perhaps audiences watched television more uncritically in the 80s.
Today, the pressure to break new ground, thrill with the visuals, deseminate a social political interpretation of the times is overwhelming.
What I don't get, is that if 'cosy crime is so awful (and cosy crime is an oxymoron in my book, if ever there was one), then why do audiences sit down every Sunday night and watch Downtown Abbey, The Young Victoria, repeats of Are You Being Served; it's all cosy fare, as is Coronation Street, and Britain's Got Talent, and, from American, Friends, The Big Bang Theory.. It's all about respectable people sometimes experiencing scandal or drama in their life, and that is what Agatha Christie presents in her stories. What are new production teams saying: that audiences can only relate to Resevoir of Dogs or Pulp Fiction type themes?There is a real call for cosy drama on television, and why the new Agatha Christie adaptations will need to break new ground, I just don't know.
Some current, famous actors, comedians or dancers doing their own take on a character - that should be enough to make audiences want to watch the new dramas.
Griselda said:
Christie doesn't need work, it's the production team. The problem is it takes a skillful adapter, director, and production team to portray these characters faithfully on the screen. There are some who haven't read one single book of hers. And if that's the case they can't say that Christie's characters need fine tuning. And to those who have read the books and say they still need fine tuning need to read the books again and study the characters more closely . . . that's your job! I give props to the actor who played Richard Symington and to the skillful production team involved.
The director (and the writer) of Downton Abbey seemed to understand subtlety. Perhaps they can be involved in the Christie adaptations.
I do still think that it would be good to do 'The Moving Finger', perhaps without Miss Marple (as they don't want to have another go at her, and because Miss Marple arrives very late in the novel anyway).