Joan Hickson as Miss Marple - 8 Episodes 
                                      
Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984) - 7.0



This was the first in the Joan Hickson adaptations of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. It was a perfect match and Hickson was to go on to be Miss Marple in all 12 of the Marple books. This was a fine start as they give it the deluxe treatment of three parts. It was a hit immediately with BBC viewers and over time everywhere. The director Silvio Narizzano does a good job of stretching it out to the 3 episodes without losing too much of its narrative drive. You can tell Hickson was still getting her characterization of Miss Marple down but most of it is here in her blank looks, her piercing blue eyes, her constant knitting, the look as she finally has figured it out. With Poirot getting a re-make with Branagh, I think it is time to do the same with Miss Marple. Make her an action figure with her knitting needles. Or with Miss Marple as a younger woman. She must have had a past. It is based on a book from 1942 that I read long enough ago that I could not recall who the murderer was. And I admit I never figured it out.



Nice beginning to the film with the maid opening the curtains early in the morning and finding a dead blonde in the library. She rushes up four flights in the Manor House to tell the owners Colonel and Dolly Bantry that they have a dead body downstairs. Their reaction is perfect as they dither about - not quite believing it - I'm not going down - you were dreaming. After seeing the body, Colonel tells his wife that she needs to have some company - the light goes on - yes Jane will know who killed this person right away. Miss Marple was not a secret within her small village of St. Mary Meade. Dolly goes to pick her up and people peek out of their windows as the car from the Manor arrives and then leaves. As the news spreads, the village folks start to avoid the Bantry's thinking that the Colonel must have something to do with the girl. Invitations are declined. Being rejected by society is the worst punishment of all.



Miss Marple doesn't know who killed the girl but a few things strike her immediately. She continues to knit and poke around in her quiet polite way and Dolly keeps asking her, have you figured it out. To which Miss Marple says not yet. Finally, she says, oh yes, I know who killed her but I need to pin it down. A clever mystery. Just as a bit of trivia - Dolly is played by Gwen Watford and in the final episode The Mirror Crack'd, she reprises her role as Dolly. By this time her affable husband has passed away and she sells the Manor to the Hollywood actress and again helps Jane solve the case.


Miss Marple: The Moving Finger (1985) - 5.0




Murder and Poison Pen letters in a small town. Based on a book from Agatha Christie in 1942 featuring Miss Marple. If you read her series of Miss Marple books, you realize that evil lurks as much in small towns as cities. Maybe more so because everyone knows everyone's business and that spawns hate and envy. It isn't one of my favorite books because Miss Marple doesn't show up until late in it and quickly solves the case. In this TV episode of the Joan Hickson series, Miss Marple makes an earlier appearance but just pops in from time to time. It focuses more on various inhabitants in the town. It is more a romance than a murder mystery with everyone falling in love. Well, not Miss Marple. Still when Hickson first shows up coming through the doorway at the train station, I broke into a big grin. Like seeing an old friend after a long absence. I have a lot of affection for the Hickson shows. Two other actresses played Miss Marple in a TV series after her, but honestly there is only one Miss Marple for me. The steely blue eyes, the look of perplexment on her face that eventually turns to understanding who did it and how it was done. Those are the money shots when you realize she knows.



Someone is sending poison pen letters to residents of the small town claiming they were doing terrible things. The cleric's wife calls in her old friend Miss Marple to come. "If anyone can figure out who is doing this, it is you". She begins to nose about in the most polite of ways. And then there is of course a murder, and then another one. Scotland Yard ignores Miss Marple thinking she is a dotty old lady. This mystery seemed too simple though and instead of the normal denouement at the end, she sets a trap for the killer. That felt very unlike Miss Marple.



Hickson had been in films since 1934 and every now and then I will come across her in some old film as a character actor in a small part - landladies, maids sort of things. Christie saw her in one of her plays on stage - Appointment with Death - and though Miss Marple was not a character in the play or book (Hercule Poirot) she wrote to Hickson "I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple." It took another 40 years for that to happen - Hickson was 78 at the time - though she had a small part in the Margaret Rutherford Christie film, Murder She Wrote. She was to be Miss Marple in twelve TV films - which I believe were all the Miss Marple books.

Miss Marple:  A Pocketful of Rye (1985) – 6.0

 

Miss Marple is up to her parlor tricks again. Unmasking a killer and bringing them to justice. This is generally a faithful rendering of her 1953 novel of the same name but makes the solution less complicated and the ending not as effective as in the book. But Joan Hickson as Marple is as always brilliant. The best part of any of her Marple TV films is when some off-hand remark makes something click for her and she suddenly puts the pieces together. She gets this look on her face of staring off into infinity. It is the money shot. She dithers a great bit often making no sense to the police but in her dithering is always the truth.

 

In the book Miss Marple isn't introduced until over a third of the way into it. Unlike Poirot, Christie often gave Marple a back seat to other characters though it is of course her who figures out the jigsaw puzzle and then patiently explains it to the police (Tom Wilkerson) who initially think of her as an addled pest. In the films though that won't do and Marple shows up earlier and takes up more room. It is Hickson that people want to see. The more the better.

 

In this one Rex Fortesque dies of poisoning at his office. He is a wealthy and loathsome being. No one is sorry to see him dead. Certainly not his family - his young wife, his son and his wife, not his daughter not the brother who is coming home after being away for years. But why does he have grains of rye in his pocket? And why did someone put black birds in a pie? Certainly one of them must be the murderer. Miss Marple trained their maid Gladys and when another character is poisoned, a nursey rhyme comes to her mind. She fears that Gladys will be next. And rushes to try and save her. It is a two-parter of 50 minutes each.
 

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie.

 

When the pie was opened

The birds began to sing—

Wasn't that a dainty dish

To set before the king?

 

The king was in the counting-house

Counting out his money,

The queen was in the parlor

Eating bread and honey,

 

The maid was in the garden

Hanging out the clothes.

Along came a blackbird

And snipped off her nose.

Miss Marple: Sleeping Murder (1987) - 6.5




This was the last Miss Marple book to be published in 1976 - after Christie had died. She wrote it during the Blitz in London and put this and another book into a safe to be published after her death. One to go to her daughter and one to her husband. It is the 6th in the Joan Hickson series. Interestingly, its plot has certain aspects that are in common with The Moving Finger written in 1942 and which I just watched the other day. In both a young married couple move to a new town and a new home. They are the central characters with Miss Marple secondary in terms of screen time and Miss Marple sets up a trap to catch the killer.  Christie must have been upset with her servants at the time because in both a maid is killed. But both the book and this film are much better than The Moving Finger. A very intricate plot and though I figured out the killer, I think that was because I watched this years ago!



The couple buy a beautiful old house that the wife falls in love with. She and her husband have just come from New Zealand and it is her first trip to England. But something is up - she thinks she sees a dead woman on the floor, she thinks there should be a door in a room and it turns out there once was. She has hysterics at a play and Miss Marple who is there calms her down and listens to her story. No, I don't think you are going crazy - I think you must have lived in that home when you were very young. Miss Marple is of course right. The couple can't let it go and begin an investigation into the past involving her father and her step-mother who disappeared one night. It takes them into murder. Her last words of advice to the couple are "Don't ever believe anyone". A cynic our Miss Marple.


Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) - 7.5



This was the final Miss Marple novel written by Agatha Christie and published in 1971. There were twelve of them compared to 33 for Poirot. Poirot was her favorite though at times she felt trapped by his character. I think over time though that Miss Marple has become the more popular character. There were the Rutherford films of course, two with Helen Hayes and then beginning with Joan Hickson three different TV series that covered most of her books three times and in some cases they invented a few more. There is just something about this quiet elderly lady living in a small very British village who solves murders with her steel trap of a mind and being able to compare things to life in a village. Evil is everywhere. She senses it around her. But to all her friends and neighbors she is just a little old lady, scatter-brained at times and often knitting. But she believes in justice and morality.



No where more than this film. One character says of her "She is an avenging angel". This has a very clever plot - out of the ordinary in that she has to solve a murder that took place some years before. There are no clues as she just ingests what everyone says to her and figures it out. This may be my favorite of the Hickson adaptations. Besides being very good, Hickson is in nearly every scene as compared to some of the others where Marple pops in and out. Those that are fans of the series are fans because of Hickson. I noticed today that she has 222 credits on IMDB. I would love to see her in the TV Mini-Series Great Expectations in which she plays Miss Havisham.



In this one she receives a letter from an old friend, Jason Rafiel, a very wealthy businessman who she met in a Caribbean Mystery - played by Donald Pleasance in that one. He is dying and knows it and by the time Miss Marple gets his letter, he has died. In the letter he asks her to solve one more mystery for him. He calls her Nemesis. He tells her practically nothing - just to go on a bus tour of England's great houses (which looked like a very nice tour). He credits her by saying she will figure it out as the tour progresses. She slowly does. It has to do with his son who was suspected of a murder of a young girl and disappeared and he is now a tramp (in the book, he was found guilty and is in jail). With mere fragments of conversations she gets closer and closer. The final scene is rather marvelous as she faces the killer.


Miss Marple: At Bertams Hotel (1987) - 6.0



Miss Marple (Joan Hickson) spends a pleasant fortnight at Bertram's Hotel in London and solves a murder and breaks up a crime ring. Just an ordinary week in the life of this spinster from the small village of St. Mary Meades. Bertram's is an old-fashioned hotel with an older well-off loyal clientele with a wonderful tea in the afternoon that serves pastries filled with cream or jams. Seed cake is their specialty. There is one small black and white TV for the entire hotel in the communal room and there are other tucked away comfy rooms for people to talk. Or eavesdrop in high back chairs. Miss Marple's nephew thought she needed some time off from her quiet village and paid for a fortnight at Bertram's. But what is an elderly lady to do to fill her time. Snoop of course. Stick her nose in where it doesn't belong. What she does best.



As soon as Miss Marple arrives, she sits, knits, observes and gossips with an old friend Lady Selina, played by Joan Greenwood. Greenwood was one of England's finest actresses in the 1940s and 50s appearing in such classics as Whiskey Galore, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit and Tom Jones. In her late 60's now, she still has this remarkable voice that seems as if honey syrup and gasoline were poured down her throat. She has the inside scoop on everyone and fills Miss Marple in. It takes a very long time before anything actually happens as Miss Marple just waits and watches and listens - and in one case even follows one of the hotel guests.



She can't put her finger on it but senses that something is wrong in this old hotel. As she tells a Scotland Yard copper (George Baker) who is trying to stay undercover but can't fool the old lady, "nothing ever changes in this hotel and there is something wrong in that". This was written by Christie in 1965 and perhaps by then she was looking for more than what were termed "cozy mysteries" and so has an ending that takes it out of that sub-genre into another - but not sure it works. This was very leisurely in its pacing and was just what I look for when I can't decide what I want to watch and my ambitions are low.



Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (1991) – 5.5




I have gotten into the habit of reading an Agatha Christie novel and then finding a film of it. Theatrical if possible but a TV film if not. This is from the series with Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. It was 12 episodes for the 12 Miss Marple novels and ran from 1984 to 1992. Hickson and the filmmakers finally got Miss Marple right. Margaret Rutherford of course played Marple in the four fun films in the 1960's but her portrayal of the character is absurdly comic and eccentric. Angela Lansbury took her on in The Mirror Crack'd in 1980 but that was a bloated film full of stars and Lansbury was closer to her character in Murder, She Wrote than Miss Marple. But Hickson is perfect, quietly observing everything, her light blue eyes in thoughtful repose. That moment when you know she has figured out who the killer is is told in her eyes.

 

Hickson was 78 years old when she first played Miss Marple and was 86 when she filmed the last one. She had been in film since 1934 playing secondary roles in films and TV. She is recognizable even in her early films but she was never an attractive woman and the roles she got affirmed that. In an odd twist, when Christie saw her in one of her plays in the 1940s, she wrote Hickson a note saying "I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple". By 1984 her appearances had dwindled down to one or two a year though in 1980 she was Miss Havisham in a mini-series adaptation of Great Expectations. I will have to look for that. BBC had decided to make a series of Miss Marple films and wanted to play them straight. Thankfully, they chose Hickson. She was to make one small appearance after her last Miss Marple film and then retired. But that was not to be the end of Miss Marple.

 

In 2004 another TV series was begun first starring Geraldine McEwan (2004–2008) and then Julia McKenzie (2009–2013) as Miss Marple. They cover the same 12 novels but then oddly insert Miss Marple into Christie books where she didn't belong. For example, she appears in a Tommy and Tuppence story - who had had their own TV series back in 1983. Or Ordeal with Innocence, a very good Christie novel but nothing to do with Miss Marple. I have only seen a few of these - McEwan is lacking in energy and McKenzie has too much of it.

 

They Do It with Mirrors struck me as one of Christie's lazier works. She fills it with police interviews of the suspects and then the ending is awful because there is no classical denouement of Miss Marple telling everyone who the killer is. That is always the best part. It was also clearly obvious to me who the killer had to be. The film corrects this. Tightens it up. Has the denouement. Has that look come into her eyes and the Inspector sees it as well - "You know who the killer is don't you?" "Yes". And it moves quickly enough so that the guilty party is not so easy to pick out - though of course I knew from the book!

 It takes place as so many of Christie's novels do among the upper crust - no gasoline attendant murders for her  - when a friend of Miss Marple asks her to visit her wealthy sister because she senses something is wrong but has no idea what it is. Just a feeling. The sister is played by Jean Simmons and her husband by Joss Ackland. An extended family is living there from various marriages. Another member of the extended family arrives unexpectedly. He is murdered the same night. Who had a motive? Who had opportunity? Seemingly no one had both.
Miss Marple: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1992) - 7.0



St. Mary Meade. As charming a small English village as one could imagine. Right out of an Enid Blyton book. Vicars on bicycles pedaling down narrow lanes, English gardens full of roses and irises, tea shops with crumpets and blueberry muffins. The sound of the church bells on a Sunday morning. And of course murder. In the heart of this idyllic town. Fortunately, there is an elderly lady with suspicious eyes and a knack for detecting evil. Miss Marple loves her garden and doddering over a cup of tea where the gossip flows like a magical fountain.  But nothing like a good juicy murder to solve. She takes murder personally. Especially in her village. The village manor has been purchased from her good friend Dolly Bantry and the owners are now a famous actress (Claire Bloom), her husband (Barry Newman) and the usual staff of hot and cold running servants.



A fête is given on the grounds for the common folks with Punch and Judy, children’s games and English puddings and tarts. Mrs. Badcock in particular is thrilled to see the actress Marina Gregg while the rest of the ladies are more interested in the newly renovated marble bathrooms. Mrs. Badcock takes a drink and dies from poison. But why would anyone want to murder a stout middle-aged woman of no-account. Was the poison really meant for Marina? The police in this case immediately go to Miss Marple. One of the better whodunits in the Miss Marple series. I knew the killer having seen the 1980 film with Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple and read the book, but I am reasonably sure I didn’t have any idea the first time. This is quite well-done and much better than the stodgy 1980 film which was too loaded down with stars – Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Edward Fox and Geraldine Chaplin. This one has no stars but all the actors are perfect for their roles. As a tiny bit of trivia if you are ever on Jeopardy some sunny day – the actress who plays Miss Marple’s maid (Margaret Courtenay) played Mrs. Bantry in the 1980 version. This was the final Miss Marple made with Hickson.