The TV adaptation of the first book in Robert Thoroughgood’s mystery series is here, I’ve finished watching it and so this Sunday is time for me to tell you all about it!
It’s a two part adaptation of The Marlow Murder Club, which is the first of the three books we have had so far in the series. It introduces us to Judith, Becks and Suzie who become friends and co-investigators as they try to figure out who killed Judith’s neighbour – whose murder she hears while swimming in the river. The police are initially sceptical that it’s actually a murder but then the lead detective makes the threesome become civilian advisors after realising that they were right. That’s about all I’m going to tell you except that more deaths follow.
This is definitely a cozy mystery series, it does have it’s dramatic moments, but if there’s a scale that goes from Sister Boniface and Father Brown (10) through to Morse (1) on the humorous to serious scale, it’s somewhere around a 6. I found some bits of it too cringe to watch – but they’re all things that are in the book and that didn’t bother me (or at least not as much) in the reading.This has been adapted for the screen by the author – who is also the creator of the Death in Paradise TV series – and I can’t work out if that’s a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, he clearly knows which elements of the characters’ backstories are important to keep for future developments, on the other, he might be a bit too close to the material to get the best out of it.
The acting is a little patchy in places – but I liked Samantha Bond as Judith, even though she’s at least a decade younger than Book Judith, and I find it traumatic that the actress who played Julia in the Joan Hickson Murder is Announced is now old enough to be playing senior citizen roles. But that’s my issue about how fast time has passed and how often I’ve watched those Miss Marples! On the whole, I prefer the books – because of the cringe-embarrassment factor, but I think it’s a fairly solid adaptation, and I definitely liked it more than I’ve liked a lot of the most recent Agatha Raisin adaptations and I think it’s better than them.
In the UK, this was shown on Drama, and also is available on UKTV Play. As you can see from the trailer that I’ve found it’s been on 7 Australia and it looks like it’s going to be on PBS Masterpiece in the US.
Have a great Sunday everyone.