not to want Agatha Christie sexed up.

Watched it last night, brilliantly acted, but grim and depressing, with one really gratuitous sex scene. It reminded me a bit of Rillington Place - wrong Christie!

Please No. There are far too many TV, film, or books which seem to have been force fed with bizarrely haphazard sex scenes which do nothing to enhance the storyline.

Wasn't Margaret Rutherford in an early version of The 4.50 From Paddington?

I've often wondered whether AC got the idea while on a train after dark. Another train passed, with the carriages all lit up, so for a few seconds she saw clearly inside those carriages, and she thought, 'What if...?'

I thought the Margaret Rutherford version is to be shown?

I don't think anyone would have accused her of being sexy!

Christine I totally agree. Leave the classics undamaged! Changing anything that Agatha Christie wrote will not improve on perfection. It is merely the same old 'dumbing down' so that nobody is called upon to think or use their intelligence.

Where is the talent nowadays? If people want modern plays, films and books surely there are authors out there who can supply them.
Or is it a question of budget? Is it cheaper to take a hatchet to literature where the royalties are no longer due?

Don't have strong feelings either way about Christie novels, as I find them rather silly, but the sight of Aidan Turner clad only in a towel in last year's "And Then There Were None" was one of the highlights of the festive season!

I so agree that Joan Hickson was the perfect Miss Marple. Heaven knows what was behind the dreadfulness of Geraldine McEwan's portrayal.

Must say I really don't like a lot of the more modern Christie productions - in particular the ITV 'Marple' series. It's MISS Marple, thank you very much! They rewrite the plots, add this and that, and (to me) often wreck them.
To me there will never be any Miss Marple to hold a candle to the Joan Hickson versions - Agatha herself wanted Hickson for the part - or any Poirot to match David Suchet.

Prime example of ruination to me is the Hickson vs. modern ITV version of Sleepimg Murder. The Hickson version is seriously creepy and atmospheric - it gave me the shivers when I first saw it. All that was utterly absent from the ITV version.

I have been a big Agatha Christie fan forever. I have most of her books...have them in hard back. This is not how the books were written. There is flirting and occasionally things are implied. There is no need for more. There is definitely no need for swearing...

Why do producers etc have to re-make everything? The recent 'Dad's Army' was a waste of money (I absolutely would not want to see it, the original was written with the actors in mind), Porridge, Reginald Perrin etc were perfectly suited to the actors. I object to Disney, too. He alters our stories - wasn't the Fat Controller altered to be more PC? Joan Hickson was perfect as Miss Marple. Old B&W films are wonderful, ruined by being updated, different slants put to the story lines. Leave stories in the original as the writer intended.

All it illustrates is how lacking in creative imagination the current load of television producers/director/writers are.

The idea of sexing up Agatha Christie is so banal, unimaginative and cliched. It is what is done to every older author who managed to write a really good book without full frontal nudity and violence.

I read a survey recently saying younger people are having less sex than ever before. I assume this bunch of creatives are so sex starved they cannot even cope with pornography so have to try and sex-up simple straight forward stories like Agatha Christie's because that is all they are capable of.

Since Miss Marple had a relationship with a married serving officer who died in the Great War, you can hardly call the stories innocent. BUT we do not need more violence than is already in the stories - they are murders after all - to make them eminently watchable.

It must be very difficult to avoid making a total mess of trying to update books which are of their era, like Agatha Christie's, so why on earth do they bother? As Margs says, the stories stand on their own. I remember listening to a radio adaptation of "Smallbone Deceased" by Michael Gilbert, which is one of my all-time favourite books and published in 1950. For some reason they tried to set it some decades later, and it just didn't work.

On a similar subject, we went to see "Scrooge" at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, and as it's a musical, of course it isn't 100% true to the book, but that is fair enough for a musical,and it was very well done. However, spoiler alert, the Ghost of Christmas Past turned out at the last minute to be the ghost of Scrooge's dead sister. It added nothing to the plot - quite the reverse - and seemed to me to be an annoying irrelevance. Think I managed to keep my mutterings silent for the sake of the rest of the audience!

What a sad situation.

So it will be a polically correct, diverse, inclusive, foul mouthed, sexual Christmas production. This is the BBC in 2016.

Bring back Muffin the Mule that's what I say.

I agree with Cherrytree about the perfume sexy perfume ads. They must cost a bomb to make with well paid stars in them which is reflected in the price of the product.
I had to turn off a BBC recommended film the other evening because of the frequent use of the f word. Also it is unnecessary to show the whole sex act. I remember the days when the door shut in a film or a row of dots in a book.
Regarding turning a book into a play or film it must be difficult to be true to it. Give me a book any time.

No, no, no. This is why I love watching Christie. I think we have become so desensitised to swearing these days but leave Christie alone.

As its a stage play and film why can't they just do the script as written.

Ruby I agree about the ads
My personal gripe is with the
'over sexed' Perfume ads.

Ye gods - is nothing sacred anymore?

I agree with the contributor Sunseeker: these wonderfully clever and quality stories have stood on their own for decades,so which media 'consultant' decided "Hey! I know - let's spice up Agatha Christie by adding a hefty dose of the Harold Robbins factor. And let's get some cheesecake totty from The Only Way Is Essex to play Miss Marple......."

If it ain't broke then DON'T fix it!

I suppose they'll be starting on Jane Austen, the Brontes, Dickens & goodness knows who else soon. Nothing turns me off more than "sexed up" programmes or remakes of classic films - so "that's a big fat NO from me"

I saw the write-up and thought "Here we go again".....!

The only "advantage" of such treatment is that it may introduce people to the writer whose books they would not otherwise read.A bit like making Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice" emerge from a lake when Elizabeth Bennett turned up at Pemberley - not in the book.

It seems that the only way to get people to watch anything is to add extra "excitement". The film has to compete with other so-called "exciting" TV programmes at Christmas.

I expect we'll have a sexy "Jane Eyre" before too long: Mr Rochester seduces the innocent Jane having locked his wife in the attic so that he can subjugate said wife and play SDM games!

The charm and enjoyment of AC stories and dramatisations is that they are set in the time and context in which they were written. No I don't want them modernised they are wonderful just they way they are.

I do not want to see Agatha Christie at all.

Oh purlees!! AG is iconic and a cannon in our literary heritage and of it's time. Leave them alone! Agree Joan Hickson and David Suchet were perfect as Miss Marple and Poirot.

No, no, no.
I still watch Miss Marple and Poirot and enjoy them. Expletives and graphic sex are used far too much these days under the pretence of "real" life. I think it is just laziness, weak storylines and lack of good acting.