Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Julia McKenzie, Tom Hughes, Aneurin Barnard, Joanna Vanderham, Birgitte Hjort Sorrensen, Hugh Dennis, Tazmin Outhwaite, Adam Wadsworth, Janet Henfrey, William Hope, Glynis Barber, Michael McKell, Rosalind Halstead, Celyn Jones, Stephen Churchett.
Sunday nights aren’t quite the same without a murder to solve on television, it is a pre-occupation with the darkest of crimes that seems to capture the British public’s imagination more than anything in the world, if you include cricket into the equation, there can’t be more anything else in the world that gets more intriguing to the armchair detective/umpire than introducing facts and statistics to the case.
Unlike the sanitised slick world of its American counterpart, British television murder seems to hold a special place in the hearts of those who take the genre seriously. No easy quick fix, no focusing on the how, it is purely down to the why and the who. That is what makes Agatha Christie’s novels so good and the television adaptations so thrilling. It is the meaning of the clues that lead you to the murderer. Even in an episode of Miss Marple that is almost devoid of its star and the narration delivered by the grieving widower, the facts and the clues are there to be seen.
When two young people meet by chance in an area cursed by gypsies, the omens for them living happily ever after are not good, especially with the unseen Miss Marple popping up every so often to remind the viewer that all is not as it seems. Throw into the cocktail of murder and mayhem, money…and lots of it, a woman of Nordic proportions and a spiteful set of relatives and it’s surprising that any of the cast get out of the episode alive.
Renewing their acquaintances on screen for the episode Endless Night, both Tom Hughes and Joanna Vanderham sparked off each other well and not for the first time in 2013 lit up the screen with the whiff of betrayal and danger. Theirs though was not the only captivating performance by a cast member in the Miss Marple-light story and aside from a commanding performance by Aneurin Barnard as the architect Robbie Hayman, the episode hinged on some marvellous moments by some of the more senior women in the cast and the younger blood coming through. In particular Tazmin Outhwaite proves there is life outside of soap operas and her career has certainly moved in the right way since leaving the confines of Albert Square. It was also a delight to see Glynis Barber back on television, a woman who seems to be painfully neglected in recent years. These two women played off well against Joanna Vanderham as the woman at the centre of the story but also the alluring and vamp-ish Birgitte Hjort Sorensen who was the catalyst behind the whole sorry affair.
Rarely do you get to see four strong women, five if you include the star of the show Julia McKenzie as the seemingly indestructible Miss Marple, in one short television drama, the confines of casting usually neglecting the abundance of a great female cast, came up trumps.
Agatha Christie’s Poirot may have come to a natural and never forgotten conclusion during 2013 but there seems to be life in the evergreen Miss Marple for a long time to come.
Ian D. Hall