New Agatha Christie!

We’re getting to the point with tv that main characters from books who are white men can only be played if they are any ethnicity but Caucasian ,gay, only have one arm or are trans.

Having finally watched both episodes DH and I were underwhelmed, acting was way below par.

A rather dull adaptation of an Agatha Christie story.

Christie refers to Fitzwilliam throughout the book as being brown though, he was a white man but had been in colonial service for years, so it’s not too great a leap of imagination for him to be a black man. I really don’t think that was a central issue of the weakness of the original story, or of the adaptation. It wasn’t a Marple or Poirot, which to some people is important, the timescale had moved, and surely most importantly - it was a weak story in the first place.

Yes Casdon a sunburned white man, but that’s a great leap to be turned into a black man!😄

I think she repeatedly made the point that he was brown because that made him stand out as different in an era where sunbathing was avoided Oreo.

What a shame these adaptations are not a patch on the 2015 one, ‘And Then There Were None’, staring the gorgeous Aidan (Poldark) Turner.

Now that was worth watching!

Casdon

I think she repeatedly made the point that he was brown because that made him stand out as different in an era where sunbathing was avoided Oreo.

1939 - I don't think tanning was taboo as Coco Chanel had made it fashionable years before then.

My parents had an overseas posting in the 1930s and I expect my mother was tanned!

I think it was more to do with showing that he had been living in a hot country for quite a while, just as anyone working on digs in Egypt for a long time became very brown.That he was different yes, because was out of touch with country villages in England.
Actually sunbathing by the more well off was practised, even in the 1930’s which was the era in which the book was set.

I was so hoping Murder Is Easy would be as good as The Pale Horse. Never mind The Pale Horse is now available on catch up! Rufus Sewell!

Thought it was terrible I see TV critic agree with me . We watched the first half but might miss out the second .

So bad ... didn't mind the "woke" and if it had been better done it could have been interesting but it was just... so bad. Not helped by the continuous background music which seemed to be on a different path to the drama.

Oreo

We’re getting to the point with tv that main characters from books who are white men can only be played if they are any ethnicity but Caucasian ,gay, only have one arm or are trans.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying there, but does it mean that you think all adaptations should be exactly as the original book or script had them? And how do we know what colour or sexuality characters were in the original if the author didn't point it out, which they rarely do unless it is relevant to the plot? In this case, people have said that the detective was 'brown' in skin colour but ethnically 'white', but was that relevant to the book? I've read it but I don't remember that bit of information, but if the point was that he was out of touch with English villages, what's the difference in plot device between his being away on a dig and coming from Nigeria?

Do you disapprove of Hamlet being played in a modern day setting, such as in Robert Icke's excellent version with Andrew Scott in the title role? Or Romeo and Juliet being brought to a wider audience by Baz Luhrmann when he cast Leonardo DiCaprio as a modern-day Romeo, and changed the character of Mercutio to a gay black man? Would Shakespeare have approved? Who knows, and does it matter?

If there were only one 'take' on a text, theatres would die out, as once people had seen one version of a play there would be no point in going back to see what a different director had made of it.

sassysaysso

So bad ... didn't mind the "woke" and if it had been better done it could have been interesting but it was just... so bad. Not helped by the continuous background music which seemed to be on a different path to the drama.

the music was awful and I laughed at your description. so apt

Doodle dog. I think the important word in Oreo’s post is “only”.

GrannyRose15

Doodle dog. I think the important word in Oreo’s post is “only”.

Thanks, but I'm still confused ). All the same, I think my point about different interpretations of texts still holds. If someone lifted a plot, called it something else and claimed ownership it would be plagiarism, but when the differences are in the casting, the setting etc and the title and author are acknowledged it is what happens over and over in theatre, where people don't seem to get as worked up about it as TV viewers. I also think it's fairly unusual for authors to be specific about things like ethnicity or sexuality unless it is central to the plot, so moving away from just taking it as read that they are white and heterosexual is (IMO) no bad thing.

Doodledog it was an exasperated comment by me is all.
There are certain books and plays that can be changed from the original where it doesn’t matter, but in many cases it does matter but the changes are still made.In which case it would be much better to be true to the book or play.There can be many new tv programmes made to accommodate different ethnicities and sexualities.Just as a for instance, it doesn’t matter a jot if Dr Who is black, gay or a woman.

But who decides which works can and which can't be changed? Does it matter if the detective in Murder Is Easy is black or white? Does it matter if Mercutio is gay? Or played by a black actor? I just don't understand why people (not just you!) get so exasperated. The stories are fiction anyway. It's true that for years the default has been to assume that characters are white and straight, but gay people and people of colour have always been part of society, so isn't it more realistic to include the possibility that some characters would have been, too? Casting Othello as white or Shylock as Christian wouldn't work, as the plots hinge on Othello's ethnicity and Shylock's religion, but where these things are incidental, why is it considered 'woke' to deviate from the white heterosexual 'norm'?

Good post Doodledog at 20.39.
I’ve started watching Why Didn’t They Ask Evan’s. I’d forgotten that Bobby’s business partner is a black West Indian. According to Google, In the book, he’s Badger Beadon - friend of Bobby and was at Oxford with Roger Bassington-French.
It’s dramatic licence to make changes, some of which do challenge the traditional default assumptions about white and straight characters.

I enjoy reading older books and stories and watching dramatisations of them. It's interesting to see how life was then. I like seeing Christie's books presented on screen as they were written eg in the Poirot or earlier Marple stories.
Apart from inserting the Nigerian character this time we had anti empire comments and rather pathetic feminist views clumsily inserted.
I agree with you on most things Doodledog but not this dramatisation.

Aveline

I enjoy reading older books and stories and watching dramatisations of them. It's interesting to see how life was then. I like seeing Christie's books presented on screen as they were written eg in the Poirot or earlier Marple stories.
Apart from inserting the Nigerian character this time we had anti empire comments and rather pathetic feminist views clumsily inserted.
I agree with you on most things Doodledog but not this dramatisation.

The material point though is that this interpretation wouldn’t have been good even with your favourite choice of white actor playing Fitzwilliam.

BBC was best when Joan Hickson portrayed Miss Marple. Now those were good watchable programmes. Still available all over Christmas and I’ve been recording them and watching them instead of this new version. The same with Midsomer Murders. Much better when John Nettles was in it. Remakes don’t often match up to the originals.

Casdon that wasn't the material point. Just one of the many potential complaints.

The material point though is that this interpretation wouldn’t have been good even with your favourite choice of white actor playing Fitzwilliam.
I agree, actually. It was pretty dire. But not because of the choice to reinterpret it per se. I don't have any issue with that, as I've said. When it's done well, a new view of an old story can add a lot, but this one fell well short. The acting wasn't great, there were plot holes as mentioned upthread, and there wasn't enough going on to sustain two hour-long episodes.

According to her family, Christie loathed the first adaptations of her books into plays (by other people) because they didn’t make radical enough changes. She believed that when work shifts medium, the story should shift. Her family - who licence all her work - have said they believe she would have been happy to see the diversity in this programme.

Also, I can’t believe anyone would want Christie’s work - particularly her early books - dramatised exactly as they were written, littered with anti-semitism, anti-Catholicism, and racism. Indeed, over time Christie appears to have shifted her views, probably as a consequence of seeing the impact of the Nazis, changing the way she wrote about Jews, black and Asian people and other foreigners, and agreeing that her American books should have offensive language removed- it’s to the shame of her British publishers that they did not insist on the same, until recently.

On the issue of language ‘coloured’ is an offensive and inappropriate term when used to describe black and other non-white ethnicities. I’m sure, of course, that anyone using it on Gransnet only does so because they didn’t realise that.

Doodledog, precisely. The problem with this adaptation of a Christie story, is that it was a clunky adaptation, with a clunky script, badly produced and badly acted.

What was there in it that worked? DD trained as an actor and worked in broadcast media for 20 years. Her more informed and erudite dissection of this dramatisation was the same as most people, although she blamed the bad acting on the director