New Agatha Christie!

I think she repeatedly made the point that he was brown because that made him stand out as different in an era where sunbathing was avoided Oreo.

Yes Casdon a sunburned white man, but that’s a great leap to be turned into a black man!😄

Christie refers to Fitzwilliam throughout the book as being brown though, he was a white man but had been in colonial service for years, so it’s not too great a leap of imagination for him to be a black man. I really don’t think that was a central issue of the weakness of the original story, or of the adaptation. It wasn’t a Marple or Poirot, which to some people is important, the timescale had moved, and surely most importantly - it was a weak story in the first place.

Having finally watched both episodes DH and I were underwhelmed, acting was way below par.

A rather dull adaptation of an Agatha Christie story.

We’re getting to the point with tv that main characters from books who are white men can only be played if they are any ethnicity but Caucasian ,gay, only have one arm or are trans.

Aveline

Oh well Iam64 how about having Miss Marple played by Floella Benjamin? Might as well, as you seem happy to let modern rewriters play fast and loose with classic novels.

Or films about plantation slaves being played by white actors?

Iam64

My dad’s involvement with training Nigerian officers was late 50’s. We lived in a village where the only black people id seen were American GI’s from the air base. I m pleased to see black people reflected in dramas about the 1950’s, they were certainly with us. The fact Christie wrote it in the 1930’s is irrelevant

Irrelevant! 😂words fail me.

Iam64

Oreo - ‘the character’ was Nigerian. It was part of the empire, gained independence in 1960.
I have formal photographs of my dad and colleagues posed with Nigerian police officers. My dad was a detective in the Lancashire Constabulary but seconded to the Met to help train Nigerian officers to work in CID. So networks existed.

The racism that existed in the 50’s and 60’s is reflected in this adaptation.

I’ve no problem with the bbc using a black Nigerian as a key character.

Thanks but am not stupid and have read the book.The main character was a sunburned white man who was working out in Nigeria as a policeman.
I always have a problem when things are redone in a nonsensical way which this adaptation was.It was all about the Windrush generation and racial intolerance which meant setting it in 1954 instead of the original historical time in the book.Any black man who showed up in a country village would never have been invited instantly to posh parties or even accepted in the pub.It made the film seem ridiculous from the start.

how about having Miss Marple played by Floella Benjamin?

I’m sure that’s on the cards.

The questionto ask is why, far too often, the only drama ideas production companies can come up with is taking old stories, and completely rewriting them in a way totally out of sync with the author.

Why is there such a lack of creativity in television that they are unable to find any modern writers capable of writing new detective drama that reflects the world of the 1950s, but are reduced to rewriting old classics.

Actually Greyduster I thought all the acting was uniformly dreadful.

Oh well Iam64 how about having Miss Marple played by Floella Benjamin? Might as well, as you seem happy to let modern rewriters play fast and loose with classic novels.

What a lot of tosh! I have no issues with the main character being a black actor, just that he was a very bad actor. The whole thing was just poor.

I watched part 2 last night. I’ve still no problem with the main character being Nigerian. There’s no need to write a new drama about racism towards African’s who came here as a result of the Empire. Putting the story in the late 1950’s gave opportunity for that as well as reference to independence.

It was all a bit pantomime though imo. The murderer, the Lord and his fiancée were all acting in an overly staged way, it’s a pity because Agatha over this festive period is a great British tradition

I was looking forward to a new Christie adaptation, and stuck with it, though it was so disappointing. The first scenes were promising, but it went downhill as soon as Penelope Wilton went to meet her maker. I’ve no issues at all though with the main character being Nigerian - it was an opportunity to add a bit of depth to the story. But the opportunity was wasted, and the plot was so thin - very Midsummer on a bad day. I thought I’d read all the Agatha Christies, but don’t remember this one at all - it certainly wasn’t one of her best, maybe it was so bad I’d wiped it from my brain.

I caught Witness For The Prosecution the other day though and loved it.

I didn’t think much of this adaptation. I am not knowledgable about AC’s books but this seemed flimsy and light weight. Nice costumes and cars, though!

I thought Murder is Easy had been done before, not so many years ago. At the beginning I knew it was a plain woman living in a cottage who was the murderer. The actress who played the part before was creepy and far more convincing.

Actually, I thought it was pretty awful. I too have no problem with a Nigerian playing the investigator but I thought the young man was miscast - and his clothing didn't seem in keeping with the times.

The woman who played the murderer was, in my opinion, miscast also - thought I thought the whole thing was really hammy and totally unconvincing. Why did I continue to watch? Goodness only knows.

I watched Witness for the Prosecution. Of course, I have seen it before, but still marvel at Marlene Deitrich's dreadful cockney accent. For its time, though, I thought it was pretty good, though the barrister's screaming at his nurse would not, I think, be thought amusing these days.

I too think it is usually a mistake to try and contemporise old stories. Agatha Christie was a genius with plotting but the plots don't really lend themselves to modern life. As someone else said, it would, in my opinion, be better to commission more up-to-date writers to produce up-to- date material that reflect modern life.

There have been so many adaptations that are true to the books that yet another one would be pointless for many people who have seen or read them all before. I think that adding something different helps to bring the stories to wider audiences, and Christie's characters are very formulaic, so giving them another side to their lives or personalities is usually a good thing. This one wasn't very good, but not because of the change of setting, IMO.

I’m now glad I didn’t watch it. It would only have made me want to chuck something at the telly.

Liking not likening

Aveline

Well the BBC should commission new dramas to include black and coloured actors to reflect current considerations not superimpose them clumsily on a story written in 1939.

This is what I think too. There are just too many anachronisms when they try to change fundamentals of a story in this way. Don’t even think that they reflected the culture of the time they set it in. Too much 21st century thinking superimposed on a period piece for my likening. Having said that if you don’t look too closely it was mildly entertaining.

Iam64 I'm sure there were Nigerians in parts of the UK in the 1950s. My objection is their imposition into a story written in 1939 to make some sort of a point . Why not write a new drama about them and the trials and tribulations they faced there. No need to shoehorn one into a story by a popular writer with many fans who would find this irritating to say the least.

Aveline

Why couldn't the the writer of this tosh think up her own story rather than try to hitch hike on to Agatha Christie' s name to sell this tosh?

Quite

Kandinsky

Turned off after 20 minutes - absolutely awful.
Agatha Christie was off its time, leave it alone!
Bang the woke drum somewhere else.

This.

Why they need to muck about with any of AC’s books defeats me.

Of course the definitive TV versions will always be the Joan Hickson/Suchet ones - to me, anyway.

My dad’s involvement with training Nigerian officers was late 50’s. We lived in a village where the only black people id seen were American GI’s from the air base. I m pleased to see black people reflected in dramas about the 1950’s, they were certainly with us. The fact Christie wrote it in the 1930’s is irrelevant

I had more problems with the actress playing Miss Waynflete than I had with the Nigerian character. I'd watched her in Hullraisers and her accent bugged me.