Marple: Sleeping Murder (2006) (TV)

Director:

Edward Hall

Writers:

Stephen Churchett (screenplay) and
Agatha Christie (novel)

Release Date:

5 February 2006 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Plot:

In 1951, Gwenda Halliday, a wealthy young Englishwoman recently emigrated from India, intuitively buys a seaside manor house, where she re-experiences a 1934 murder.

Plot Keywords:

Miss Marple | India | 1951 | 1934 | Strangled To Death

Cast

Geraldine McEwan	...	Miss Jane Marple
Russ Abbot	...	Chief Inspector Arthur Primer
Geraldine Chaplin	...	Mrs. Fane
Philip Davis	...	Dr. James Alfred Kennedy (as Phil Davis)
Dawn French	...	Janet Erskine
Martin Kemp	...	Jackie Afflick
Aidan McArdle	...	Hugh Hornbeam
Paul McGann	...	Dickie Erskine
Sophia Myles	...	Gwenda Halliday
Anna-Louise Plowman	...	Helen Marsden
Peter Serafinowicz	...	Walter Fane
Una Stubbs	...	Edith Pagett
Julian Wadham	...	Kelvin Halliday
Sarah Parish	...	Evie Ballantine
Emilio Doorgasingh	...	Sergant Desai

Also Known As:

Agatha Christie - Marple: Sleeping Murder (Australia) (DVD title)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Sidmouth, Devon, England, UK

Company:

Agatha Christie

Goofs:

Anachronisms: During one of the flashbacks of the Funnybones performances, Edith plays a famous tune called "Sabre Dance" on the xylophone. However this would be impossible since the song was not composed until the 1940's and the flashbacks are said to be in 1934.

Quotes:

Miss Jane Marple: It was long time. Do you really want to rake up the past? Who knows what we may find?

Movie Connections:

Version of Sleeping Murder (1987) (TV)

a jumbled mess that bears very faint relation to the original

I was looking forward to the new adaptation of Sleeping Murder for a long time - and rarely have I been so sorely disappointed and affronted by a television programme! It's the utterly inexplicable changes to the book that made this adaptation not only hard to follow but also exasperating for any fans of Agatha Christie. I simply fail to see the point in changing the nationalities of characters, their relation to each other, and even the means of Miss Marple's involvement - which is tenuous and peripheral throughout.

While the more recent adaptations of Poirot seem to be taking on the darker tone of the original books, this version of Marple appears to have an insatiable urge to 'jolly-hockey-stick' up the story to the point where it's an embarrassing parody of the original and a grave injustice to the author's legacy. Given the success of the 1980s adaptation of Sleeping Murder starring the excellent Joan Hickson, it's not surprising that the programme-makers might want to change elements of the story in order to justify the remake - but this just felt like it was cashing in on the names of Agatha Christie and Marple, with no respect for and little understanding of what made the book and the earlier TV programmes so memorable.