Miss Marple: A Caribbean Mystery *** (1989, Joan Hickson, Donald Pleasence, Adrian Lukis, Sophie Ward, T P McKenna, Michael Feast, Robert Swann, Sue Lloyd) – Classic Movie Review 9,637

The suspenseful, escapist 1989 TV movie Miss Marple: A Caribbean Mystery again stars Joan Hickson in her tenth case as the BBC’s Miss Marple, based on the novel by Agatha Christie. It is shot at the Coral Reef Hotel in Barbados, where Christie had stayed. 

Director Chris Petit’s agreeable, suspenseful, escapist 1989 TV movie Miss Marple: A Caribbean Mystery again stars Joan Hickson, who takes on her tenth case as the BBC’s Miss Marple, based on the novel by Agatha Christie. It is shot on location at the Coral Reef Hotel in Barbados, where Christie had stayed and which had inspired the novel’s setting. It is the prequel story to Nemesis, in which Miss Marple first encounters Jason Rafiel. 

A Caribbean Mystery is an excellent Christie mystery, in which the diligent Miss Jane Marple takes a break from her holiday knitting to investigate when a retired elderly British guest, Major Palgrave (Frank Middlemass), staying at her Barbados hotel, is bumped off at the Caribbean island resort. She is helped in her persistent inquiries by rich co-vacationer, millionaire Jason Rafiel (Donald Pleasence), and together they try to solve the mystery.

T R Bowen’s script satisfyingly keeps largely faithful to the novel, with just three characters missing, and a couple of incidental detail changes.

Also in the cast are Adrian Lukis, Sophie Ward, T P McKenna, Michael Feast, Robert Swann, Sue Lloyd, Sheila Ruskin, Barbara Barnes, Stephen Bent, Joseph Mydell, Valerie Buchanan and Isabelle Lucas.

Jason Rafiel was first played by Frank Gatliff in Nemesis in 1987 when A Caribbean Mystery was not yet made by the BBC.

It is a remake of A Caribbean Mystery (1983) with Helen Hayes as Miss Marple and Barnard Hughes as Mr Rafiel.

With its story of murder most foul, it was the Christmas Day treat on BBC tv in 1989 just as The Murder at the Vicarage was in 1986 and 4.50 from Paddington was in 1987.

It was remade in 2013 for the sixth series of ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Marple, starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple, with Antony Sher as Jason Rafiel and Oliver Ford Davies as Major Palgrave.

It is shot on location at the Coral Reef Hotel in Barbados, where Christie had stayed and which had inspired the novel’s setting. Owners Budge and Cynthia O’Hara, who inspired the novel’s characters and still owned the hotel 30 years later, shared Christie memorabilia and stories with the cast and crew. The 1989 version is the only one of the three adaptations shot in the Caribbean (on the island of Barbados, which was the fictional island of St Honoré in the novel). The 1983 movie was shot in California and the 2013 version in Cape Town.

Hickson said A Caribbean Mystery would be her last, but was persuaded to return for two final films. It is followed by Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors, directed by Norman Stone (1991), the eleventh in the 12 film series.

It follows The Body in the Library, The Moving Finger, A Murder Is Announced, A Pocketful of Rye. The Murder at the Vicarage, and Sleeping Murder, At Bertram’s Hotel, Nemesis and 4.50 from Paddington,

A Caribbean Mystery was first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 16 November 1964. Jason Rafiel appears again, posthumously, in the 1971 novel Nemesis, along with his assistant Esther Walters.

the rights to three already co-existed and were set to expire at the end of 1988.

The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side, A Caribbean Mystery and They Do It With Mirrors had to be filmed last as their screen rights only expired at the end of 1988 after Angela Lansbury starred as Miss Jane Marple in The Mirror Crack’d (1980), and Helen Hayes starred as Miss Marple in A Caribbean Mystery (1983) and Murder with Mirrors (1985).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9,637

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