BBC's Marple/Poirot

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:16:12 GMT

So we've been watching some of the recent Poirot and Marple series, the latest offering from the BBC to explore Agatha Christie's work. (We've only seen the episodes with Geraldine McEwan, not the most recent Julia McKenzie ones, which haven't meandered to the local library yet.) For some of us, this is a welcome return to a nice cozy world of British people casually bumping each other off between sips of tea, and for others, it's a reason to get after Miss Marple.

"See! They would have been perfectly happy if Miss Marple hadn't interfered."

It has a definite Scooby Doo quality to it, but the sense of Miss Marple as a meddler in the brilliant plans of murderers is pretty strong here. We also continue to ask why anybody ever invites Poirot anyplace, much less lets him into the door. In the Marple series, people are kindly murdered near her home, or she's brought in after the murders have occurred, so it's not quite the same Murder She Wrote feeling. But dead bodies just seem to pile up around Poirot.

I can't help but think just how many murders would have been continually more successful had those supposedly intelligent and well planned murders just been postponed a bit, to ensure that Poirot was nowhere around to notice clues and ask revealing questions. I get that in a couple of cases, the murderer(s) felt they would have no other opportunity, and of course in Cards on the Table, the infamous mystery where a major clue is in bridge scores, Poirot and other detectives were brought in specifically to face four murderers, but, still. I can't help advising everyone who sees Poirot to run! run! Especially before that gun or that bottle of poison makes its deadly and cluish appearance!

But for those of you not indulging in unreasonable hatreds for sweet, vinegary old Miss Marple or entirely reasonable fears of Poirot, these are fairly good adaptations – not precisely the books I remember, and some definite changes have been made to a couple of the Miss Marple stories – but definitely light and fluffy fare. Er, that is, as murders go. And they would definitely have gotten away with it had it not been for those meddling detectives.

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BBC's Marple/Poirot