Marple: Series 2-3
Dec. 5th, 2009 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreThis is one of the most strangely mixed series ever. The visuals are great and the actors are awesome, but it has some of the oddest and sometimes clunkiest rewrites ever. Some episodes actually feel like televised fanfic, especially when they start rewriting the romances (I get the impression Christie wasn’t big on romances, having them mostly in her standalones and sometimes as a subplot in the Miss Marples) or adapting non-Miss Marple stories to be Miss Marple stories. Those often feel like Miss Marple’s role is largely to voice what the original detective was likely thinking in the original version.
But Geraldine McEwan’s Miss Marple is awesome, though I suspect she isn’t quite like Agatha Christie wrote her. (I haven’t read the books and only have Joan Hickson to compare her to. And Hickson was awesome and, I’m told, exactly as imagined by Christie. Just a different awesome.) The writers also clearly think she’s the best thing ever (even having the majority of the men seeming to flirt with her, at some point) which goes a long way to helping with the writing. The writing also improves a lot in Series 3, so I could mostly giggle at the awkwardness there, instead of the earlier combination of giggling and growling.
The series also seems determined to have the entirety of BBC’s actors play a role in here at one point or another. I’ve watched a ton of BBC stuff the last year or so, and so there was a lot of “Oh! s/he was in X as Y!” I’m pretty sure half the cast of Bleak House has shown up at some point.
Series 4, I think, recasts Miss Marple, so I should wait a bit in between.
But Geraldine McEwan’s Miss Marple is awesome, though I suspect she isn’t quite like Agatha Christie wrote her. (I haven’t read the books and only have Joan Hickson to compare her to. And Hickson was awesome and, I’m told, exactly as imagined by Christie. Just a different awesome.) The writers also clearly think she’s the best thing ever (even having the majority of the men seeming to flirt with her, at some point) which goes a long way to helping with the writing. The writing also improves a lot in Series 3, so I could mostly giggle at the awkwardness there, instead of the earlier combination of giggling and growling.
The series also seems determined to have the entirety of BBC’s actors play a role in here at one point or another. I’ve watched a ton of BBC stuff the last year or so, and so there was a lot of “Oh! s/he was in X as Y!” I’m pretty sure half the cast of Bleak House has shown up at some point.
Series 4, I think, recasts Miss Marple, so I should wait a bit in between.