Review by C.J. Bunce
For all the adaptations of Agatha Christie’s works for film and television, many are hit-and-miss. Fortunately that’s not the case for the faithful BBC adaptation of Christie’s 1939 novel Murder is Easy, now streaming on BritBox. It’s not as fun and exciting as the 2022 series Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? and probably won’t reel you in completely like Kenneth Branagh’s latest film A Haunting in Venice, but it has all the cozy mystery storytelling you’d expect from the most read novelist of all time, and it has a cast filled with England’s very best TV actors.
Adaptations that get too far from the source material should not be allowed to keep the name and the claim. The major switch-up by director Meenu Gahr (World on Fire) and writer Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre (Ellis) is swapping a typical English police officer for an attaché to the colonial governor of Nigeria–allowing viewers a more fleshed-out lead than a stock character. David Jonnson (Industry) plays Luke Fitzwilliam, an engaging, concerned man who stumbles upon a train mate as he’s about to take up a new position at Whitehall. That’s Shaun of the Dead’s Penelope Wilton as Miss Pinkerton, a very familiar detective story character. She tells Fitzwilliam she’s off to talk to Scotland Yard to inform them of several murders in the village of Wychwood. A connoisseur of betting the ponies, she is run down by a car after placing a lucrative wager with Mr. Fitzwilliam.
What is Fitzwilliam to do? Investigate, of course!
Enter the Clue/Cluedo cast of suspects, beginning with Bridget Conway, played by Morfydd Clark, best known for her leading role as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and her role in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Bridget is curious and quirky, embracing the charm of newcomer Fitzwilliam while clinging on to her drip of a fiancé Lord Whitfield (stress on Lord) played by Tom Riley (The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window). Then there is the Shetland two-fer: former Brit mystery co-stars Douglas Henshall as the Colonel Mustard-esque Major Horton and Mark Bonnar as a priest quite unsatisfied with the citizens of his village.
All the red herrings point to Mathew Baynton (Ghosts-UK) as the seemingly incompetent Dr. Thomas, but maybe the culprit is Ms. Marvel’s Nimra Bucha’s as Mrs. Humbleby. Or it’s someone else entirely. Whoever it is, the bodies keep dropping.
Gahr and Ejiwunmi-Le Berre keep the same Christie brand of sleuthing with a story set a few decades later, making room for discussions of empire, class, race, and the role of women in British society. It works. Count this among the best of the Christie adaptations, although at two hours total it plays more as a TV movie than a typical TV series.
We’re always on the lookout for the next great British / Irish / Scottish / UK / Aussie / NZ police procedural or mystery. Murder is Easy misses our top tier of British mysteries, which includes Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Van der Valk, Zen, Guilt, Case Histories, Shetland, Annika, The Hour, Hinterland, and Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? But it comfortably lands among that high-quality second tier of British series, with Grace, Payback, Troppo, Professor T, Luther, Traces, Glitch, Mystery Road, Requiem, Marchlands, Lightfields, The Secret of Crickley Hall, Quirke, and the first season of Sherlock, and it is steps above series like The Bay, Unforgotten, Crime, Ordeal by Innocence, The Pale Horse, Collateral, Roadkill, A Confession, Dublin Murders, The ABC Murders, The Salisbury Poisonings, The Silence, The Five, The Missing, Stay Close, Thirteen, or Broadchurch.
It’s must-watch viewing for fans of the detective mystery genre. Catch both hour-long episodes of Murder is Easy now exclusively here on BritBox via Amazon in the U.S., available via BBC One in the UK.
