Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors *** (1991, Joan Hickson, Jean Simmons, Joss Ackland, Faith Brook, David Horovitch) – Classic Movie Review 9,640

Shots are fired in a darkened room in the lively, inventive and unusual 1991 TV movie Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors. Joan Hickson takes on her eleventh case as the BBC’s detective Miss Marple, based on the novel by Agatha Christie. 

Director Norman Stone’s lively, inventive and unusual 1991 TV movie Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors again stars Joan Hickson, who takes on her eleventh case as the BBC’s detective Miss Marple, based on the novel by Agatha Christie. It also stars Jean Simmons as Carrie-Louise Serrocold, Joss Ackland as Lewis Serrocold, Faith Brook as Ruth van Rydock, Gillian Barge as Mildred Strete and Neal Swettenham as Edgar Lawson.

Agatha Christie’s spinster sleuth Miss Marple (Hickson) visits a childhood friend and finds herself in the middle of a bizarre ménage – for an eccentric extended family and a reformatory for young criminals. Shots are fired in a darkened room, but the murder victim is found elsewhere.

Chief Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) and Sgt Lake (Ian Brimble) are naturally perplexed, but the spinster sleuth finds that the murderer’s secret hobby gives her a vital clue to the killer.

With a smooth script again by T R Bowen, it is satisfyingly basically faithful to the novel, with only two or three small exceptions.

Also in the cast are Christopher Villiers, Jay Villiers, Holly Aird, Todd Boyce, Matthew Cottle, David Doyle, Saul Reichlin, John Bott, Brenda Cowling, Jake Wood, and Tom Kerridge.

It first aired on BBC1 on 29 December 1991.

The dust jacket illustration of the UK First Edition.

Miss Marple says: ‘They do it with mirrors’, referring to the illusions of magicians and a stage set. Thinking of that leads her to a fresh look at the evening of the first murder.

It is a remake of Murder with Mirrors, the 1985 TV film with Helen Hayes as Miss Marple, Sir John Mills as Lewis Serrocold, Bette Davis as Carrie-Louise Serrocold, and Tim Roth as Edgar Lawson. That was the second of Helen Hayes’s two Miss Marple movies, following A Caribbean Mystery (1983).

It was remade with many notable changes and additions for the fourth season of the ITV series Agatha Christie’s Marple, shown on 1 January 2010 and starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple, Penelope Wilton as Carrie-Louise Serrocold, Brian Cox as Lewis Serrocold, and Joan Collins as Ruth van Rydock.

Some elements of the story are incorporated in the 1964 film Murder Ahoy!, wtth Margaret Rutherford.

Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors is directed by Norman Stone, runs 115 minutes, is made by British Broadcasting Corporation and A+E Networks, is released by British Broadcasting Corporation (1991) (UK), is written by T R Bowen, is shot by John Walker, is produced by George Gallaccio, and is scored by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard.

The dust jacket illustration of the US actual first edition.

They Do It with Mirrors was first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1952 as Murder with Mirrors (at $2.50) and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on 17 November 1952 under Christie’s original title at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6).

It is followed by 12th and final case, Miss Marple: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1992).

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, and A Caribbean Mystery.

Two years earlier, in 1989, Jean Simmons had appeared as murder mystery author Eudora McVeigh Shipton, a rival to Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), in the Murder, She Wrote two-part TV episode Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9,640

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