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Posts Tagged ‘PBS Masterpiece Mystery!’

Watch The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side Online: PBS Masterpiece Mystery

Posted in Movie review, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 30, 2010| 6 Comments »

Miss Marple (Julia McKenzie) and Dolly Bantry(Joanna Lumley)

Last Sunday, Miss Marple made a grand fifth season entrance for PBS Masterpiece Mystery! with its latest episode, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. If you missed the episode, it is available online at this link until June 6th.

Marina (Lindsay Duncan) stares off into space with a look of doom

In this elegant mystery, based on a tragic event in actress Gene Tierney’s life, film star Marina Gregg (Lindsay Duncan) takes up residence at Gossington Hall with her fifth husband, young film director Jason Rudd (Nigel Harman). During a charity garden party, a guest named Heather Badcock (Caroline Quinton) drinks a poisoned cocktail and survives the experience by a mere few seconds. Laid up with a sore ankle, Miss Marple learns from her friend Dolly Bantry (played by the incomparable Joanna Lumley) that Marina was caught staring into space with a look of doom on her face just before poor Heather cocked up her toes.

Marina and husband #5, director Jason Rudd (Nigel Harman)

Enter Inspector Hewitt, whose list of usual suspects includes Marina’s past husbands and entourage of employees, colleagues, and hangers-on, looks for the obvious suspect. An attempt is made on Marina’s life while she is filming a movie, which confirms in Hewitt’s mind that she was the original target for murder, not Heather. Throw in a blackmailer, who is also found dead, and the plot has sufficiently thickened to leave viewers scratching their heads and relying on Miss Marple to make sense of the mayhem.

Inspector Hewitt (Hugh Bonneville, L) and sidekick take a traditional approach to solving a murder

As always, the cast of characters is superb. In addition to Ms. Lumley, Lindsay Duncan (Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Lost in Austen) and High Bonneville (Mr. Bennet in Lost in Austen and Mr. Rushworth in Mansfield Park) also make an appearance. I’ve grown quite accustomed to seeing Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple, and she fits my idea of that dowdy but sharp-eyed sleuth like a well worn glove. (As an aside, I advise that any of Miss Marple’s friends or relatives should steer clear of her, for where ever she goes, death is sure to follow!)

Why is reporter Margot Bence (Charlotte Riley) making life difficult for Marina?

The setting of a small English village and costumes of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s (the book was published in 1962) are superb. I have had the privilege to watch all three new episodes of Miss Marple this season, and while I liked this tale, it is not the best of the three. Perhaps because Mirror was based on a true story, the murder plot seemed a little loose and diffuse. The ending is enigmatic and lacks the satisfying and tidy wrap up of most of Agatha Christie’s plots. And yet I found my hour and a half well spent.

Joanna Lumley as Dolly Bantry

Well done, PBS Masterpiece Mystery! Two more original episodes will be aired (The Secret of Chimneys and The Blue Geranium), including two encore presentations (A Pocketful of Rye and Murder is Easy.) Five Miss Marples in one season! Life can’t get much better than this.

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Inspector Lewis Returns to PBS Mystery!

Posted in Movie review, Popular culture, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 30, 2009| 18 Comments »

For a review of Inspector Lewis Series III, 2010, Counter Culture Blues, Click Here.

The Point of Vanishing was this season’s last Inspector Lewis episode. What a fine way to end a fine season. If you have missed the episode, click here to view it online for one more week.
pointofvanishing
Here’s the episode’s synopsis: “Steven Mullan is found dead in his bathtub, the scalding water indicative of the white-hot rage that motivated the murder. Lewis recognizes Mullan as having been recently released from prison after having tried to kill celebrity atheist Tom Rattenbury while driving drunk. Mullan’s sentence may be over, but have the scars healed for the Rattenburys, especially daughter Jessica who remains in a wheelchair from the incident? Lewis and Hathaway find a postcard at the crime scene of a Renaissance painting inscribed with the words, “It was no dream.” But the case is about to take a surreal, dream-like twist, leaving Lewis and Hathaway drowning in questions about crimes of the past and the present.”

pointof_vanishing

Click here for Radio Times images of Kevin Whately as Inspector Lewis.

Episode One, Season II: And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea

And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea –
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

Lewis and Whately

Lewis and Whately

The first murder at the Boleian Library in Oxford in 500 years is nothing to dismiss. In fact, the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley is a key link to the murder of maintenance engineer Chapman (Darren Clarke) in the library and lovely student Nell Buckley (Emily Beecham), who is found floating in the river. How are these deaths connected? Inspectors Lewis (Kevin Whately) and Hathaway (Laurence Fox) are in a race against time to find out in “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea”, the first episode of the second season of Inspector Lewis.

Set in Oxford, the settings are stunning, with the story’s action occurring inside the Bodleian library, on the grounds of the university, and in and around that venerable city. The plot, while not particularly suspenseful, was complex and interesting enough to hold this viewer’s interest. Emily Beecham is especially appealing as the doomed student, Nell, and Tom Riley (Lost in Austen fans will remember his delicious portrayal of Wickham) is unforgettable as art student, Philip Horton, a murder suspect who is probably autistic.

PBS will be showing the Inspector Lewis series, season 2,  from August 30 to October 18th. Missed the first episode? Recent episodes are available online on PBS for two weeks after they aired in the U.S.
poster_moonbeams

poster_musictodieforEpisode Two, Music to Die for, Season Two

“Music to Die For”, the second episode of Inspector Lewis, Series 2 on PBS’s Mystery! did not disappoint, and in fact was among the best television I have watched in a long while. As with “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea”, this murder mystery is intelligent, restrained, witty, and informative. I learned about no-rules boxing and the Cold War intrigue in East Berlin in which informants caused the imprisonment (and deaths) of thousands of their friends, acquaintances, and family members. Add the setting of Oxford (I’ve seen more of the town in this series than during  my half day visit a decade ago), and your 90 minutes are well spent.

If you missed Episode two, you can watch it online until September 20th at this PBS link.

Episode Three, Life Born of Fire, Season 2

Will McEwan staggers into a church and takes his own life at the altar, leaving behind a suicide note cloaked in religious symbolism — “On the road from Gethsemane to Calvary, I lost my way” — and a pamphlet for a shadowy spiritual group “The Garden.” What would lead a young and faithful man to such desperation?

poster_bornoffire

I found this episode particularly fascinating because the story delves deeply into Hathaway’s past and his reasons for leaving the priesthood. Both Lewis and Hathaway are loners, as most detectives of mystery series seem to be these days, and I found the glimpses into their personal lives  intriguing. My only quibble with this episode was the sequence of the fire itself. Had it been set off by gasoline,  I doubt that it would have taken more than 2-3 minutes for the fire to rage out of control. The timing of those scenes was off just enough to distract me. The acting was, again, superb, and I thought I had solved the mystery, but I was wrong. The actual solution was so much better than my suspicions. I cannot praise this series enough.

Episode Four: The Great and the Good

the great and th good

The ending of this episode is haunting, with Inspector Lewis desperate to find information about his wife’s death. In this episode, Oxford is made up of two kinds of people: those who are on the “inside,” in this instance, Oxford dons, and those who will never enter that magical circle, like Inspector Lewis and Hathaway. Although the plot was a bit convoluted and at times hard to follow, I found myself watching the last ten minutes with keen interest. Once again, I failed to identify the killer, but once his identity was revealed, the story began to make sense.

Ep 5Episode Five: Allegory of Love

Tom Mison (2)

In this episode “Lewis and Hathaway get pulled into the world of Oxford’s literary elite, only to find that it harbors resentment and jealousy and at its center, holds terrible secrets beyond all imagination.” The stars are Tom Mison (Mr. Bingley in Lost in Austen) as Dorian Craig, bestselling novelist, and James Fox, professor. The ending of this episode is particularly memorable and upsetting.

Episode Six: The Quality of Mercy “Lewis and Hathaway methodically try to make sense of the murderous plot, but before they do, another death occurs with a Shakespearean sensibility. As the final act is about to unfold, the case takes an intensely personal turn for Lewis, bringing back traumatic memories and invoking a lesson in mercy.”

quality of mercy

Episode Seven: The Point of Vanishing

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Miss Marple, Series 4: Now you can own your own DVD Set

Posted in Movie review, PBS Movie Adaptation, Popular culture, tagged , , , on August 1, 2009| 3 Comments »

Miss MarpleYour own DVD set of Marple, Series 4 is available for shipping today! Agatha Christie’s spinster sleuth is brilliantly played by Julia McKenzie in this delightful mystery series. Julia as Miss Marple dons the traditional tweeds as if they were made for her, and the casts for all four episodes are stellar: Matthew MacFadyen, Rupert Graves, Wendy Richard, Hattie Morahan, Sylvia Simms, Anna Chancellor, Jemma Redgrave, Russell Tovey, Amanda Root, Elliot Cowan, Joan Collins, and Nigel Terry are among the suspects and victims. This set of finely produced DVDs, issued by Acorn Media, includes the following episodes:

Disc 1 A POCKET FULL OF RYE

Who poisoned wealthy businessman Rex Fortescue? Miss Marple barely has time to ponder this question before her former maid Gladys turns up strangled on the Fortescue estate, a clothes peg stuck on her nose. The murders seem to bear an uncanny resemblance to a child’s nursery rhyme. Miss Marple and Inspector Neele uncover clues from the dead man’s shadowy past that may reveal a method to the madness. Go to the PBS page to read about this episode.

Disc 2 MURDER IS EASY

Murder is easy, as long as nobody thinks it’s murder. So says elderly Miss Pinkerton to Miss Marple during a chance encounter on a train. Soon Miss Pinkerton herself dies, and Miss Marple believes that it was no accident. Her curiosity piqued, she travels to the peaceful village of Wychwood-under-Ashe to investigate. Charming her way into village life, she befriends a former policeman and discovers a shocking secret—one worth killing for.  Read the recap on Austenprose

Disc 3 THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS

Miss Marple’s old friend Carrie-Louise has always had a soft heart for charitable causes. This time it’s juvenile criminals, lodged in a reformatory on the estate she shares with her husband. But her sister, Ruth van Rydock, is worried about her and asks Miss Marple to pay a visit. With her sharp eyes and unerring sleuthing skills, Miss Marple quickly assesses the situation—but not in time to prevent a murder. Can she save her friend from becoming the next victim? Read the synopsis and about the cast in this PBS link.

Disc 4 WHY DIDN’T THEY ASK EVANS?

A dying man’s last words turn young Bobby Attfield into an amateur detective. With the help of two assistants, beautiful socialite Frankie Derwent and family friend Jane Marple, he sets out to solve the riddle they pose. When someone tries to kill Bobby, it only strengthens his resolve. A trail of clues leads the unlikely trio to Castle Savage and its strange inhabitants, the discovery of yet another murder, and the lingering question: why didn’t they ask Evans? Read our review in this link.

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Murder. Mayhem. Miss Marple. Masterpiece Mystery!

Posted in Movie review, Popular culture, tagged , , , , , on July 20, 2009| 9 Comments »

Retired policeman Luke Fitzwilliam and Miss Marple looking for clues

Retired policeman Luke Fitzwilliam and Miss Marple looking for clues

I’ve held off reviewing this excellent series showing on PBS Masterpiece Mystery! until I got a good sense of how well Julia McKenzie fares as the observant elderly sleuth, and I find that she plays the character true to form. Julia’s Miss Marple reminds me of the smart but deferential women of my grandmother’s generation who stand on the sidelines but whose power lay in maneuvering others into action or thinking their way. In PBS’s new Miss Marple series, Julia’s mousy character can easily disappear into the woodwork as she takes on the role of keen observer. She never oversteps her boundaries with the detectives who arrive on the scene to solve a case. And what fine detectives they are! This season we have Matthew MacFadyen as Inspector Neele,  Benedict Cumberbatch as retired policeman Luke Fitzwilliam, Alex Jennings as Inspector Curry, and Warren Clarke as Commander Peters. While these men are quite capable, they lack Miss Marple’s “insider” knowledge, as she has a knack for being at the right place at the wrong time, as it were. They also lack her female intuition, which prompts her to notice those tiny details that men often miss, such as a redhead not choosing to dye her hat red.

Wendy Richard as Mrs. Crump

Wendy Richard as Mrs. Crump

If I lived in Great Britain and I saw Miss Marple heading towards my village, I’d get into my Bentley and run, for everywhere Miss Marple goes, murder follows. In Murder is Easy so many victims fell, that I wondered if the village would have to be abandoned for lack of inhabitants.

The biggest treat in watching this finely produced series is to see the familiar stable of British actors who people the lovely villages in which the plots thicken. In addition to the detectives, we get to watch Rupert Graves, Hattie Morahan, Prunella Scales, Anna Chancellor, Amanda Root, Jemma Redgrave, Russel Tovey, Joan Collins, Elliot Cowan, Maxine Peak, Nigel Terry, well, the list goes on and on. We’ve seen all these familiar faces before on BBC, ITV, and PBS productions, and so we know that the quality of the acting will be superb. And then there are the shots of the British countryside, the beautiful costumes of pre-World War II Britain, and the exquisite mansions and their interiors. A cup of tea, my pooch on my lap, and Miss Marple is all the entertainment I need to relax on a Sunday night.

Matthew MacFadyen and Julia McKenzie

Matthew MacFadyen and Julia McKenzie

joan collinsMy enjoyment of the series does not blind me to the dated quality of these Agatha Christie plots. Also, Miss Marple is a woman of her time, and seeing how she boosts the egos of the males around her and makes polite “suggestions” that lead the inspectors in the right direction makes me cringe. This is how smart women once lived and how many women still get their point across – through manipulation. The murders are often solved through coincidences that are sometimes too convenient, and the mysteries themselves are contrived, too convoluted, and in many instances, weak. Despite all the red herrings thrown my way, in two out of three instances I had solved the murder halfway through the show, but I am being picky. I still prefer a good Agatha Christie mystery over almost anything aired on the cultural wasteland that t.v. has become. For production value I give this murder series. 5 stars. For entertainment, 4 stars. For quality of mystery, 3 stars.

Watch the series online:

DVDMissed the first three episodes? You can watch two episodes online on PBS’s website at this link. The DVD, which will come out soon as well, will feature all four episodes:

  1. A Pocketful of Rye
  2. Murder is Easy
  3. They Do it With Mirrors
  4. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

Order the Poirot Set 4 DVD’s from Acorn Media. Click here.

More About the Series

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