Miss Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage (1986)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Crappy film

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

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.

This is a quasi perfect murder that turns sour because of completely secondary moralistic considerations that should never have come up in the minds of two criminals. But it is the feminine touch of Miss Marple and Agatha Christie. They cannot admit the viciousness of a woman, at least to that point. It is also the presence of the vicar and his vicarage that makes the tale more moral than it should be. A criminal is far beyond redemption when he or she starts planning and preparing, especially when he or she is not alone in the business. A crime of passion can lead to a guilty conscience, but not a premeditated crime with a plotting accomplice. But once again Miss Marple targets people who are living in at least divided circumstances. The main victim is a colonel who has a daughter from an earlier wife and is re-married to a quite younger woman. He is wealthy for sure but he has a very bad character, if not temper, and that makes him a difficult person to live with in private and public life, which provides him with a lot of enemies.

'Murder at the Vicarage' was Christie's first Miss Marple book. The BBC filmed it about mid way through their series featuring Joan Hickson. As always, Hickson is very good as the elderly sleuth and St Mary Mead is realistically shown as a very average (ie not TOO picture postcard) English village. Again, the slightly grainy nature of the film is in keeping.There is good support from Paul Eddington as the vicar and Cheryl Campbell is just delightful as his wife Griselda - the high point for me! The other village gossips are well presented as is the nervy Mr Hawes and Norma West is very effective as the slightly creepy Mrs Lestrange. Fatally however, in my opinion, the central characters of Anne Protheroe and Lawrence Redding are quite poorly done as are the other members of the Protheroe family.The newer McEwen version is much more effective in my opinion but this is still well worth watching.

I have never thought that Margaret Rutherford was the perfect actress to portray Christie's famous lady detective.Angela Landsbury,who portrayed her in "the mirror cracked" was not an ideal choice either.Joan Hickson was Miss Marple as I see her ,discreet ,insightful,mischievous,terribly observant.She and the detective inspector make a funny pair,like Poirot and Japp. Unlike Poirot,Marple does not really investigate.She never questions the suspects (some of whom even use her as their alibi)but has a rare talent for observation."Murder at the vicarage" is a classic Christie novel:it happens in Jane Marple's village where a wicked colonel nobody likes -and thus has a reason to kill him of course- is murdered.It even involves the priests who are suspects too.Good job by all the cast.French title (of the novel and the movie):"L'affaire Prothero" .

It is difficult to understand ITV's decision to remake the Miss Marple series, because in Joan Hickson we have the definitive interpretation of Agatha Christie's amateur sleuth. This particular story, Miss Marple's first fictional outing,dates from 1930, but the writer, T.R. Bowen has skilfully updated it to the 1950s. The script is witty and the cast is endowed with such acting stalwarts as Paul Eddington and Rosalie Crutchley. If the plot does not seem so original now it is because Christie's work was so often copied, and what must have seemed innovative in 1930 now appears to be hackneyed. All that said it is a story well told and worth a couple of hours of anyone's time.