Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Joan Hickson | ... | Miss Marple | |
Paul Eddington | ... | Reverend Leonard Clement | |
Cheryl Campbell | ... | Griselda Clement | |
Robert Lang | ... | Colonel Lucius Protheroe | |
Polly Adams | ... | Ann Protheroe | |
Tara MacGowran | ... | Lettice Protheroe | |
James Hazeldine | ... | Lawrence Redding | |
Christopher Good | ... | Christopher Hawes | |
Norma West | ... | Mrs. Lestrange | |
Michael Browning | ... | Dr. Haydock | |
David Horovitch | ... | Det. Inspector Slack | |
Ian Brimble | ... | Det. Sergeant Lake | |
Jack Galloway | ... | Bill Archer | |
Rachel Weaver | ... | Mary Wright | |
Rosalie Crutchley | ... | Mrs. Price-Ridley |
When a despised magistrate is found shot to death in the library of the local vicarage, his wife and her lover, a portrait painter living on the church grounds, both confess to the crime. Miss Marple's keen powers of observation clear both of them of the crime, but other suspects abound. Included are the murdered man's daughter, who posed for the artist, a neurotic cleric who's embezzled church funds, the local doctor, an ex-convict who poached on the magistrate's land, and a missionary's enigmatic widow who argued with him the day before he was killed. An exasperated Inspector Slack must reluctantly accept help from the analytical Miss Marple. Written by Gabe Taverney (duke1029@aol.com)
It is difficult to understand ITV's decision to remake the Miss Marple series, because in Joan Hickson we have the definitive interpretation of Agatha Christie's amateur sleuth. This particular story, Miss Marple's first fictional outing,dates from 1930, but the writer, T.R. Bowen has skilfully updated it to the 1950s. The script is witty and the cast is endowed with such acting stalwarts as Paul Eddington and Rosalie Crutchley. If the plot does not seem so original now it is because Christie's work was so often copied, and what must have seemed innovative in 1930 now appears to be hackneyed. All that said it is a story well told and worth a couple of hours of anyone's time.