Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Lesley Manville, Tim McMullan, Conleth Hill, Matthew Beard, Alexandros Logothetis, Michael Maloney, Daniel Mays, Claire Rushbrook, Ian Lloyd Anderson, Karen Westwood, Jude Hill, Harry Lawtey, Joel Birkett, Pippa Haywood, Nia Deacon, Dorothy Atkinson, Chu Omambala, Karl Collins, Lorcan Cranitch, Sanjeev Kohli, Sutara Gayle, Danielle Ryan, David Herlihy, Nathan Clarke, Paul Tylak, Adam Ewan, San Shella, Azeem Alahi, Daniel Costello, Phina Oruche, Killian Donnelly, James Flynn, Kate Gilmore.
To be friends with an artist is to know that the likelihood of you appearing somewhere in their life as a Muse is near inevitable; to be on the wrong side of a poet, a writer, a sculptor, or a musician, is to feel a sense of eternal wrath that follows a disagreement.
It could be the simplicity of a character with an exaggerated impediment, a person on the page to whom ridicule is slowly revealed, there could be a secret that was once disclosed and which now is used as a written bullet, used to harm in retaliation, or the unmasking of a darker side to the one placed in print, the damnation of having them inhabit the literature embodiment of a murderer, a psychopath, a deranged killer. That is the issue at hand when you cross someone with art in their soul…they can elevate you to godhood or sentence you to a life of Hell long after you have departed their lives and this mortal coil.
Written and adapted by the legendary Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders is a near perfect psychological analysis of the patterns of behaviour of the disgruntled and acutely observant writer, and whilst presented as a magnificent adoptee of the crime genre, underneath it has the presence of a progressive examination of how one person can be a gift of mind to those with keyboard and a sarcastic, even dominating personality can destroy someone’s life without once picking up a knife or a gun, without resorting to poison or any other foul means of spilling blood.
The six-part series sees the sublime talents of actors that have always given their all to the cause, but to whom seem to transcend the art itself as they tackle a script that is joyous, insightful, and dramatic to the point where the games played by the writer, both the real adaptor and the fictional embodiment of the craft, are fiercely proud and remarkable.
Lesley Manville, Tim McMullan, Conleth Hill, Matthew Beard, and Pippa Haywood are in extraordinary form, especially for Matthew Beard who plays the fictional detective’s assistant, and the modern writer’s gay lover. This is especially eye catching as both Mr. Beard and Conleith Hill perform admirably in the television drama Vienna Blood as father and son.
It is through the relationship between fact and fiction, a flourish of the Meta as Tim McMullan and Lesley Manville devour discretely the screen and the senses as Nazi labour camp survivor turned detective Atticus Pünd and publishing agent Susan Ryeland combine to solve the mystery at hand.
A sheer delight for the armchair detective, one of the finest singular series of recent years, Anthony Horowitz has pushed the boundaries of the television detective once again.
Ian D. Hall