Paul Evans Arthur Bantry has passed away, Dolly Bantry has sold Gossington Hall to legendary film icon Marina Gregg, and moved to a small lodge on the site. Marina has moved to St Mary Mead for a quieter life, along with husband Jason Rudd and servants. Marina agrees for Gossington Hall to host its annual fête, she is introduced to the locals, one she meets in particular seems to have a profound effect on her, Heather Badcock, a woman of modest means from the new development site and St John's Ambulance volunteer. During the rather dull conversation about a meeting many years previous, Marina is frozen to the spot, a look described as being likened to The Lady of Shalott 'Doom came upon her etc.' Heather, not a drinker, takes a drink (a daiquiri) intended for Marina, not used to alcohol suddenly dies, alarm bells raised and Marina descends into a terrified state, who had intended to poison her? Miss Marple, now in advanced years has a carer/companion Miss Knight, a feisty Scots woman who attempts to encourage Miss Marple to take it easy, but the Detective in her sets out to unravel the mystery.As a novel I think it's one of the easiest Agatha Christie stories to read, the characters are beautifully created, they translate well into this adaptation. Claire Bloom is particularly delightful as Marina Gregg, I firmly believe in her being a great actress in her later years (well it's not exactly a stretch in reality is it?) such a beautiful, charismatic woman.Lots of old friends on show to bow out with, Inspector's Craddock and Slack, Dolly Bantry, Sergeant Lake, Christopher Hawes etc, it ends with such a sweet moment.Favourite scene has to be the village ladies discovering the Marble bathrooms for the first time, no doubt rare at the time, their reactions are just wonderful. Miss Marple's frustrations with Miss Knight are so fun tooSuch a shame they never adapted The Blue Geranium, I love the audio-book ready by Joan Hikson.People have commented about Miss Marple suddenly being Craddock's aunt, I think it's meant more as a term of endearment, a closeness developed over the years.9/10, a tale of tragedy as well as a murder, with subtle elements of humour woven in. I like it very very much. It's ultimately superior to the Hollywood film.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU The poor village of Saint Mary Mead is invaded by some American actors and actresses for the shooting of a film. The main actress was actually raised in the village before moving to America. It's obvious Miss Marple does not consider cinema actors as very respectable people, though that is no reason to kill them. But apparently it is by far enough to justify their suicide. The story is sordid about the past, but that is nearly nothing when compared with the sordidness of the present they impose onto themselves and one another. Working conditions of actors and actresses are horrific and producers are the worst exploiters that can exist and they deserve our full and complete condescending contempt. Add into that picture a couple of adopted children, rejected afterwards, and then a real child reduced to an incurable fate by German measles during the pregnancy and you have the squalid reality of this case. So it is nearly nice of Jane Marple to overlook the slight detail that the death of that actress was not entirely natural though it looks suicidal, or maybe not entirely suicidal though it looks absolutely natural, or whatever other mixture with artificial added in the lot. In one word good riddance and just hope God is just as understanding as we are not.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

sissoed Hickson's Miss Marple has always struck me as very authentic, and this adaptation captures the tone and feel of the book very well, cutting-out some of the complexities (Marina Gregg's first husband, events concerning the butler) that burdened the book with unhelpful and implausible complexities. But one key observation in the book, about the flaw in Heather Badcock's nature that led to her death, made this book my favorite Christie, and it ought not to have been cut. In Miss Marple's first meeting with her, Badcock's conversation causes Miss Marple to recognize a similarity between Badcock and an old acquaintance of Miss Marple, Alison Wilde. At the end of the book, Miss Marple explains (SPOILER coming): 'Quite so,' said Miss Marple, '(Marina Gregg) never knew (who gave her the German Measles that crippled her baby) until one afternoon here when a perfectly strange woman came up those stairs and told her the fact - told her, what was more - with a great deal of pleasure! With an air of being proud of what she'd done! She thought she'd been resourceful and brave and shown a lot of spirit in getting up from her bed, covering her face with make-up, and going along to meet the actress on whom she had such a crush and obtaining her autograph. It's a thing she has boasted of all through her life. Heather Badcock meant no harm. She never did mean harm but there is no doubt that people like Heather Badcock (and like my old friend Alison Wilde), are capable of doing a lot of harm because they lack not kindness, they have kindness - but any real consideration for the way their actions may affect other people. She thought always of what an action meant to her, never sparing a thought to what it might mean to somebody else.'The whole book thus is driven not by greed for money, or lust, or fear of exposure, or blackmail -- the typical drivers of murder mysteries -- but by the devastating effects of self- centered thoughtlessness by a person who never meant anyone any harm. It is a book with a moral message: that it is incumbent on all of us not merely to be free of any overt desire to do harm to another person, but to take thought as to how our plans and proposed actions may nevertheless hurt others. This aspect of The Mirror Cracked raises it above all the other Christie novels that I've read (and I've by no means read all that many) by giving it a subtlety that others do not have. It is a shame that Miss Marple does not say in this adaptation the lines she says in the book that make this theme clear. As a mystery, the adaptation has a fundamental flaw: in reality, the police would have focused on Marina Gregg's drink, from the moment she gave it to Heather all the way back to the waitress's tray and to the bar before that, examining in detail everyone who was near it, and the police would almost certainly have ascertained within an hour or two after the party that only Marina could have poisoned it. Who could have not only gotten access to the drug, but known it was poisonous, and gotten it into Marina's own glass? Members of the household might know about the drug and might have gotten a dose in advance, but when might they get access to the glass during the party and yet escape detection? Outsiders would not know about the drug. Moreover, the police would certainly have questioned the waitress and cleared-up the bit about who jogged Badcock's arm. This adaptation thus depends entirely on the trick of making us not notice the fact that the police have failed to do what any police department would have done immediately. What makes Christie's technique particularly clever is that she gives us a police detective (Craddock) who is so calm, thoughtful, and intelligent, and yet burdened with a nasty fault-finding boss who surely will spot any incompetence by Craddock, we naturally assume that the police, as we see them in the story, are doing as competent a job as any police force could do -- when in fact the police (Craddock especially) are quite incompetent. And the last touch, by the casting director, is to cast an actor whom most women viewers will find especially attractive, so that they are even more inclined to want to believe that he is doing everything that a competent police detective would do.

johnbol It may not be the best of the bunch but it's still a good TV movie. A nice touch is the fact that we see several faces that we saw in Murder At The Vicarage an earlier movie of this series. There is Dolly Bantrey ( now a widow), there is the vicar ( he was not the vicar in Murder at the vicarage but seems to have made a promotion) and some more characters. This one is surely better than the movie with Liz Taylor and Angela Lansbury. This was the last one of the series and it's a shame they did not continue it with movies of some of the Miss Marple short stories. Hickson was - up till now - the best Miss Marple. Let's hope they 'll find another person just as good and still use the short stories!