Too much of everything

Really Surprised!

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The key for taste this serie , in my case, was to ignore the portrait of Miss Marple created by Agatha Christie. because each actress in this role, gives her nuances and colors and accents to it. so, the war was between Geraldine Mc Ewan and Julia McKenzie. both are admirable. the difference - maybe the manner to define the character. in the case of lady McEwan , the good intention was the lead aspect. the hard try to give to her character consistence. the result was decent and honorable. Julia McKenzie propose, maybe, a more familiar version. more comfortable. and , at first sigh, more inspired.

I'm a lover of all A C's works,and enjoyed this with the exception of the portrayal of Miss Marple by Geraldine Mcewan. For me she brings absolutely nothing to the wonderful character that is M M. She succeeds only in making everybody else in the play seem exciting and interesting. So many actresses have bought their own particular take on Miss Marple. e.g Julia Mackenzie- warm,humorous, Joan Hickson-stern,forthwright. But you could be forgiven for assuming that Miss Mcewan is the deceased! And yet does seem to never receive any criticism for bringing nothing to what is a wonderful character that a lot of actresses would delight in playing.Sorry to speak ill of the dead but that is my overwhelming feeling. I've never seen Miss Mcewan in anything else to pass judgement on and do not have a grudge. But needed to say this as almost in a state of disbelief about this.

As many negative reviews as this series has received for taking too much liberty of Dame Agatha Christie's original work, I must admit that I find it quite enjoyable to watch. I personally don't mind it changed some of Dame Agatha's below-average original novels, and find a few of these adaptions quite interesting and even can be said as an improvement of to the original, especially for her late work such as At Bertram's Hotel, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Nemesis and so on. The only one in my opinion goes way too far is Murder Is Easy. The incest element in this story could have made a decent episode of Midsomer Murders, but it's never for Agatha Christie adaptions and never will be! As for the cast, I like the portray of both McEwan and McKenzie, but find the two actresses too much of a contrary to each other, especially for the same character in a consecutive TV series. As for regular writers, Kevin Elyot's scripts are always relatively faithful ones, but sometimes it makes the film feel rather dull, most notably being A Pocket Full of Rye. Stewart Harcourt could always do some interesting changes while keeping the core of the original stories, I like most of his work except for Ordeal By Innocence. Paul Rutman wrote two episodes with quite different styles: They Do It with Mirrors is a rather faithful adaption to the original story, while The Secret of Chimneys is a total rewrite! As for Stephen Churchett, he's the one that brings many of his own ideas to the source material, sometimes they work to me, such as Nemesis and The Sittaford Mystery, and sometimes they don't, most notably being Sleeping Murder and, of course, Murder Is Easy, due to their incest themes. But dare I say that as many people might criticize this series for its "reinventing" attempts, I still praise ITV's courage of trying to seek a new way to make Christie's work being accepted to the audience, despite the controversial feed backs.

I don't like the Geraldine McEwan series because of the changes that are made to cater to modern ideals don't fit into the era in which the books are written.In this series, so many of these books are changed to have homosexual TV characters which had they been modern stories would be permissible but they are n't modern stories. These are 1930's - 1950s stories and the characters aren't even in the books. Some of the TV stories are just completely changed by this. In fact, My friends renamed 'The Body in the library' as 'The lesbians in the library' ! The Sittaford Mystery suddenly has the two women go off together to Argentina! Why add this when it isn't even in the books? Agatha Christie is superb and can stand alone without any character and plot changes . Leave these stories how they were meant to be, how they were actually written. Don't introduce or change the sexuality of characters to cater for modern viewers.It changes the feel of the book.Awful.