Miss Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage (1986)

Faced with two false confessions and numerous suspects after a despised civil magistrate is found shot in the local vicarage, Detective Inspector Slack reluctantly accepts help from Miss Marple.

Director:

Julian Amyes

Writer:

T.R. Bowen (dramatised by)

Stars:

Joan Hickson, Paul Eddington, Cheryl Campbell

2 nominations.

Cast

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

Storyline

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.

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Plot Keywords:

vicarage | church | daughter | shot to death | doctor | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery

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Details

Country:

UK USA Australia

Language:

English

Release Date:

25 December 1986 (UK)

Also Known As:

Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage

Filming Locations:

Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),A&E Television Networks,7 Network

Technical Specs

Runtime:

102 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

French title: L'affaire Protheroe.

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Goofs

"To everything there is a season" is from Ecclesiastes, not Proverbs.

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Quotes

Detective Inspector Slack: I thought it was looking too good to be true. I shoulds known better! Soon as I saw that nice looking, gray-haired cobra sliding about, I shoulda known better
Detective Sergeant Lake: Hunh?
Detective Inspector Slack: The Marple woman sticks to this sort of business like chewing gum to the cat.

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Crazy Credits

Robert Lang (Colonel Lucius Protheroe) was omitted from the closing credits even though his name appeared in the opening titles and he played a significant role in the opening scenes before his character was murdered.

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Connections

Followed by Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: 4:50 from Paddington (1987)

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Soundtracks

The Entertainer
(uncredited)
Written by Scott Joplin
[Lettice plays on piano]

User Reviews

An lightweight take on Miss Marple

The underlying problem with this version of Murder at the Vicarage is that the producers took it out of order. Murder at the Vicarage was Agatha's Christie's first adventure with Miss Marple. This edition was evidently produced later in the series. Here, Miss Marple is used to being involved, and police are used to consulting her, however much they resent having to do so. The script is rather heavy-handed, moving quickly from one incident to another with little or no set-up. And while the original novel does this as well, it doesn't spring things on us totally out of the blue. Joan Hickson is most probably the Miss Marple that Agatha Christie envisioned - more so than Margaret Rutherford or Helen Hayes, for example, but the rest of the production is not. True, a 200+ page novel had to be condensed into one hour and 42 minutes. This is never easy, but it has often been done successfully. Not here. The writers needed to capture the leisurely and still foreboding small village atmosphere early on. They didn't, and it makes the necessarily hurried plot revelations seem even more so. This results in far too many smug reaction shots, far too many exchanges of dialogue dripping with "significance", far too many scenes which could have been cut to a few lines of dialogue, freeing up the pace for more insightful exchanges elsewhere. (For example, the secondary priest subplot is reduced to an obligatory afterthought here. It was more prominent in the novel, but its lack of necessity here is obvious. The bit with the vicar's car is also totally unneeded; he rides his bicycle the rest of the time, anyway.) Overall, Miss Marple is reduced to an almost supporting player, which of course she is in many of the Christie novels, but one whose presence is always felt whether she is on scene or not. That isn't true here, at least until the end, and it should be.