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March 28, 2024, 07:59:44 PM

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Ordeal by Innocence

Started by The Duck Man, April 17, 2018, 09:49:40 AM

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The Duck Man

Anyone watch this? It ran the last three Sundays at 9pm on BBC One. An adaptation of a Christie novel, it drew a lot of praise from reviewers (the Guardian gave the first episode five stars) and from various media types on Twitter, where the writer Sarah Phelps is a regular presence.

Noteworthy for being pulled from the Christmas schedule after cast member Ed Westwick was accused of rape (it was re-shot with Christian Cooke in his role, largely successfully although there was a couple of ropey CGI shots in outdoor summer scenes), it's the third Christie adaptation by Phelps for the BBC, following on from And Then There Were None and The Witness for the Prosecution which featured in the 2015 and 2016 Christmas schedules respectively. It's also the first of seven Christie films to be shot by the BBC in a deal with her estate.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

I thought it was pretty ropey. Following a relatively intriguing opening episode (rich, horrible mother of five now grown up/unrelated children she adopted is murdered by one of them, who then dies in prison, man turns up out of the blue saying he has his alibi) it stalled massively. The second episode saw Matthew Goode, playing the embittered wheelchair-bound husband of one of the siblings, chomp his way through the furniture, extravagantly accusing anyone and everyone of murdering the mother. Only as the programme drew to a close did it seem to occur to him that aggressively winding up people he thought were killers might have consequences - he was duly offed. And then the third episode played out almost entirely in flashback for the first 40 minutes, making explicit the reasons for each child hating their mother. But it turned out that literally none of them had a hand in her murder, and it was Bill Nighy's retiring (yes, wildly against type) husband character who'd done it because she said she'd divorce him for his affair, which had also appeared briefly in the flashback. How was he discovered? He'd left the murder weapon, deliberately ignored by his policeman chum, out on his desk with a visible bloodstain, with the maid only thinking to look because the alibi simply repeated the fact that the accused was innocent and therefore what they identified as the murder weapon must have been incorrect.

So yes, a programme basically without any of the twists and turns you'd associate with the genre - all of the mystery was drawn from the reasons the children had for disliking their mother, and all of this was hinted at early on (typically through some rather over-done snap flashbacks, complete with portentous strings and murky lighting) and simply made clearer with longer call-back scenes rather than have any expectations upturned in the present. And surely if you've got an interesting plot point like five unhappy unrelated siblings with motives to kill their mother, you've got to do better than "LOL, they're literally all red herrings and knew nothing." You can't necessarily blame Christie either, as the plot had been significantly changed, including the killer.

It didn't help either that none of the surviving siblings were sympathetic, well-drawn or even particularly well-acted. Indeed, they were all incredibly dull, brooding their way through scene after scene. At least you could say of Goode, and the one who was jailed, that they were a bit camp and silly, although the latter had a very strange scene where he mimicked oral sex by forcing the policeman's fingers into his mouth, which felt a bit edgy for the sake of it.

I'm fine with a line of darker, largely Poirot/Marple-less Christie adaptations, but I think they need to be somewhat better than this. And I wonder whether the praise it's received is purely because it's doing something faintly different with the genre, and it hasn't been assessed on merit.

Blinder Data

The first episode was good but I agree it fizzled out a bit. The ending felt like the last episode of Line of Duty series two when the writer had reached the tipping point of intrigue and it was time to just tell missing story in flashback form. Some of the performances were good though: Nighy, Alice Eve, Anna Chancellor, the weird kid. And looking at the book's synopsis, I think the new ending is more interesting.

And Then There Were None was a great adaptation though, well worth checking out. Really dark, but twisty and turny in all the right places (phwoar)

holyzombiejesus

How many episodes are there of this?

Fambo Number Mive

It did seem like they were trying to really go to town on the creepiness with the constant tedious shots of the kids running slowly and the dripping blood and ticking clock. Enjoyed it though.

Quotealthough the latter had a very strange scene where he mimicked oral sex by forcing the policeman's fingers into his mouth, which felt a bit edgy for the sake of it.

I think he was trying to say that the copper was a nonce.

I haven't read the book for ages but I heard the ending was different.