Why oh why do TV script writers think they can improve on Agatha Christie's plots?

[questionzzz]

I absolutely hate the rewrites and plot embellishments that the newer TV scripts have done with the Agatha Christie books! It's not that they are just bizarre and unnecessary, they also have a weird ideological twist? which the original never had.
Eg just finished (re)watching "Agatha Christie's Marple: Why didn't They ask Evans". The original doesn't even have Miss Marple, ok fine, I get why they introduced her. But then, there' some completely random stuff about how the murderer, (lovers in the original) were brother and sister, long lost to their mother back in China, where the sister was sold as a "comfort woman", and now they are back plotting to kill the mother... huh? But why? why are you doing this? Most of the Poirot ones with David Suchet also have these completely random and bizarre ideological additions.

On a side note, absolutely obsessed with the 1980s shows with Joan Hickson (again)- she looks a bit like my grandma, loving the fashion, the gentle muted colours and body language.

@Frequentflier Yes, Adelaide is very different in the book. She's a very nice woman who Miss Marple really likes. She's also very sensible and respectable and most unlikely to suddenly throw caution to the wind by having a wild love affair. Gaskell by contrast was an unscrupulous gambler who was always a far more likely suspect.

Ooo, Taken at the Flood has just started on ITV3. Very posh house, some players in diminished circumstances....... Lots of well known actors. Celia Imrie and Jenny Agutter so far.

onewhitewhisker After The Funeral is one of my fave Christies, even tho a slightly improbable plot, because Miss Gilchrist is so relatable. A murder for a teashop:) I don't want to watch the adaptation of that to see how they have ruined it. I also loved A Murder is Announced for the same reason.And A Pocketful of Rye, which I think they changed up too.

Frequentflier yes - monstrous but strangely sympathetic. I'm a sucker for a teashop plot of any sort. I like the timeshift element and the couple of tiny errors that the reveal rests on.

Atter the Funeral adaption is really good even though that was a shaky period for them. That and The Hollow are real standouts of the time. Miss Gilchrist is ridiculously disturbing in it, the actor who played her was brilliant.

The straightforward motives make it much more likely that the reader/viewer will be able to work out whodunnit. With the modern obsession with psychological motives (Midsomer springs to mind), it's impossible to work that out. The motive is all too often far too obscure.

Joan Hickson has always been the closest I feel anyone got to portraying Miss Marple. And I'm not sure whether to vote Suchet or Ustinov.

Sleeping Murder is a great book to read, and I might search out some of the older tv shows to watch.

Mrs McGinty's dead is also interesting to read, and the plot is realistic. I agree that some of the plots conjured up today miss the point of Agatha Christie, and are pretty bizarre at times.

That was Monica Dolan playing Miss Gilchrist. Good at playing very difficult characters. She played Rose West in Appropriate Adult.

I love looking at the Agatha Christie tropes. And the recurring types/characters. And the names of the characters! Carrie Louise Serracold is a good one! Miss Brewster I'm sure is a spinster character used a few times?

Btw I think Dead Man's Folly is almost unfilmable.

Oh I'm confusing Miss Emily Brewster in Evil Under the Sun with Miss Emily Brent in And Then There Were None

@user1471565182

Im sure this is in the book of curtains as well, when he dies he instead of reaching for his Amyl Nitrate goes for his Rosary beads as some sort of payment to God for his crime. Doesnt get more catholic than that. Lots of prattling on about guilt and sin as well.

In the letter he wrote that explained everything I think he said that despite not having lived a religious life, at the end he turned back to Catholicism, the religion of his youth.

Could do with wall to wall Agatha Christie escapism right now!

Yanbu.

Don’t even get me started on what the movie makers did with the climax of the last harry potter book. A perfect perfect scene climaxing a 7 book series and they stuck a broomstick chase in the middle 🤦‍♀️ Clearly the scriptwriters thought they could do HP better that JK Rowling. They should have just filmed what she wrote.

Clearly the scriptwriters thought they could do HP better that JK Rowling. They should have just filmed what she wrote.

I remember someone who was adapting a Jane Austen novel for tv saying that his/her (can't recall who it was) adaptation was going to say what Jane Austen really meant to say. The arrogance of presuming to think s/he knew better than Jane! If any author ever said exactly what she meant, she did.

Don't watch Kenneth Branaghs adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express then, it's abysmal. Famously the greatest twist of any murder mystery ever but somehow he's managed to make it so eye wateringly banal I almost cried with relief when it was over. No character development, no narrative, no decent dialogue, no tension. If I hadn't read the novel I wouldn't have understood the ending. Worst of all there was an amazing cast line up all of whom should have known better, and who were clearly happy to be paid huge amounts in exchange for appearing on screen for the minimum time possible! (Can you tell I dislike this film)

I did not see the one where they made Poirot a former priest - why would they do that? He was clearly always a devoted Catholic though it's not pushed into the forefront of the stories. It's one of the things I enjoyed about Suchet, you always could see that he wasn't just a vain smart man but had a deeply felt but also intellectual morality and that is what motivated his work. t stopped him from being silly. (I've never seen the Ustinov ones but I'd like to, I love watching him in interviews. He was such an interesting man.)

More generally though: I have no problem when changes are made with a view to adapting to the medium. A novel is different than a book and so often it has to be structured differently. Including Miss Lemon or Hastings are a good example, it's often a better told story with more dialogue, or another point of view that can be followed. Sometimes timelines have to be adapted, and things like that, too.

But if it's going to be done well the story, not just the plotting but what the author was trying to do with the stories, needs to be really respected. This is the problem I have with the Father Brown stories - they aren't just adaptations but they don't respect the character and they clearly don't respect Chesterton - sometimes it seems like they despise him. Sort of an artistic kick in the teeth.

There seems to be fads around this type of treatment. You go through a period where there are a lot of adaptations that try to be respectful of the source material, and then there are others where they are just used as fodder. The latter tend not to last, usually they are just products of their time and soon seem very dated. At the moment the general social trend is to shoehorn in identity politics and the social issues of the day in at every chance, and 20 years from now people will think they are unwatchable because of it.

I would consider an adaptation like Sherlock to be a different kind of thing altogether - never intended to be Conan-Doyle's stories. It was quite good at first though it really went to shit by the end.

@lidoshuffle

I concur with Joan Hickson being the definitive Miss Marple - slight and birdlike but taking all in.

The Geraldine McEwan ones had a little flashback of Miss Marple as a young woman in WW1 having a sexual affair with a soldier (officer of course!). It was as if the producer couldn't image an unmarried woman might be a virgin in 1915 and still be interesting and not a weirdo. I thought then that than incarnation was going to be poor.

While I completely agree with the thread that the original plots created by the talented Dame Christie are perfect and shouldn’t be constantly tampered with, I have a crush on Marc Warren so was quite happy to gaze at him

Get yourself on Britbox tobee. All the poirot you want with no pissing adverts. End House is the best one probably.

yep i was really, really pissed off by the way Sherlock went. it started off brilliantly but then they had to throw in love interests and make it james Bondy. Utter shite by the end. Sherlock Holmes is about 2 posh mates victorianaing around london and the country

We watched nearly all the Joan Hickson Marples during the first lockdown. Perfect tv for those strange times and she is the embodiment of MM .

Probably because every single thing has been filmed eleventy billion times and everyone is bored because they know whodunnit.

I loath the ITV Marple adaptations. The tone is all wrong. I remember watching Joan Hickson as a kid and being genuinely creeped out by them, the ITV ones are just silly.
ITV don’t understand that Marple is meant to be an old lady that everyone ignores, it’s why she is able to observe so much, instead they’ve made her an annoying busy body.

I’ve been really wanting to watch the Ustinov movies lately, hope they are on at Christmas.

Its also annoying that they made him a former priest because his original backstory - well regarded police detective (presumably only part way through a promising career) who essentially loses everything when he has to flee to another country as a refugee, rely on charity and start all over again, has loads of potential. If they wanted to do a modernising twist on his story theres more material there than poirot as a priest. Plus it does actually explain some of his quirks (his slightly fussy insistence on "tissanes", his slightly prickly pride in being Belgium etc, his not very well hidden pride, the fact he got involved in solving murders at all.

@user1471565182

Get yourself on Britbox tobee. All the poirot you want with no pissing adverts. End House is the best one probably.

I must sign up for BritBox. I love Agatha Christie books, have them all on audio book for when I'm working. A perfect rainy afternoon treat is to have a Poirot or Miss Marple on tv, curtains shut, wood burner on, pot of tea and scones. Just sit and enjoy.

But I refuse to read or watch Curtain. I know that if I ever do, then Poirot will die for me and I won't get the enjoyment back.

Its good Britbox, if you like really well made British dramas and old films (which I do) its perfect.