Miss Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage *** (1986, Joan Hickson, Paul Eddington, Cheryl Campbell, Robert Lang, Polly Adams) – Classic Movie Review 9,625

The 1986 TV movie Miss Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage again stars Joan Hickson, who takes on her fifth case as the BBC’s Miss Marple, based on Agatha Christie’s first novel to feature Miss Marple.

Director Julian Aymes’s 1986 TV movie Miss Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage again stars Joan Hickson, who takes on her fifth case as the BBC’s Miss Marple, based on the novel by Agatha Christie. Bookwise, however, it is the first novel to feature Miss Marple. Despite the novel being published in 1930, the TV movie unfolds in the mid-Fifties.

With its story of burglary, impersonation, adultery and murder, it was the Christmas Day treat on BBC tv in 1986.

Paul Eddington co-stars as the vicar, the Reverend Leonard Clement, the middle-aged minister at the vicarage in the idyllic village of St Mary Mead, where a magistrate, Colonel Lucius Protheroe, is found shot to death in the library. Another body in the library after The Body in the Library! Not a good place to go if you want to live to a ripe old age. Well, the vicar had to go there, because it is his study.

With a couple of what turn out to be false confessions by the magistrate’s wife and her portrait painter lover, and with a plethora of ripe and likely suspects to follow, Chief Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) and Detective Sergeant Lake (Ian Brimble) are naturally perplexed. But they are forced reluctantly to accept help from the spinster sleuth, who finds out the sad truth, as always.

T R Bowen’s adaptation stays close to the novel with five major exceptions: it is updated to the Fifties, the trap which exposes the killer is changed to involve another murder attempt, the characters of Vicar’s nephew Dennis Clement, archaeologist Dr Stone and his secretary Gladys Cram are dumped, poacher Bill Archer (Jack Galloway) is present in the kitchen while the murder takes place, and Anne Protheroe (Polly Adams) has a different fate.

The most entertaining film is valuable for providing a notable version of Christie’s famous plot and characters, and as a record of lovely performances from some indispensable players, not least Joan Hickson of course, Paul Eddington, Rosalie Crutchley, Polly Adams and Barbara Hicks.

The Murder at the Vicarage was filmed at Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England. It sounds like an invented village name, but it exists, seven miles southwest of Andover.

It was remade for the ITV series Agatha Christie’s Marple by Granada Television in 2004 with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple.

It adapted into a play by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy in 1949 and opened at the Playhouse Theatre on 16 December 1949, with Barbara Mullen as Miss Marple. The play version later ran in London’s West End for many years, with Muriel Pavlow as Miss Marple.

The Murder at the Vicarage, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1930, is the first novel to feature Miss Marple and her village of St Mary Mead. However, Miss Marple previously appeared in short stories in magazines from December 1927 and later collected in book form in The Thirteen Problems in 1932.

The Vicar and his young wife Griselda Clement feature again in The Body in the Library (1942) and 4.50 from Paddington (1957).

Christie dedicates her book To Rosalind, her only child Rosalind Hicks (1919–2004), who was 11 at the time.

The main cast are, Joan Hickson, Paul Eddington, Cheryl Campbell, Robert Lang, Polly Adams, Tara MacGowran, James Hazeldine, Christopher Good, Jack Galloway, David Horovitch, Ian Brimble, Rosalie Crutchley, Barbara Hicks, Norma West, Michael Browning, and Rachel Weaver.

Miss Marple: Murder at the Vicarage is directed by Julian Aymes, runs 102 minutes, is made by British Broadcasting Corporation, A+E Networks and 7 Network, is released by BBC, is written by T R Bowen, based on the novel by Agatha Christie, is shot by John Walker, is produced by George Gallaccio, and is scored by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard.

It is followed by Miss Marple: Sleeping Murder (1987), the sixth of the 12 films.

It follows The Body in the Library, The Moving Finger, A Murder Is Announced and A Pocketful of Rye.

All 12 original Miss Marple Christie novels were filmed by the BBC.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9,625

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com