Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy review: Creepy but convoluted TV version

The challenge with adapting Agatha Christie novels is that her work is so well-known, those inclined to watch a screen version already know who did it.

It’s tempting to change it up, hold some secrets back from a clued-in audience, but to deviate too far from the grand dame of golden age detective stories would be to miss the salience of her work.

Murder is Easy has been adapted before. With a particularly nasty set of crimes, the story naturally lends itself to an eerie mystery shattering the idyll of the English chocolate box village.

Bodies keep dropping, and it’s clear the culprit is someone with few scruples and a lack of empathy.

This version dials up the creep factor, often superfluously, with a series of visual and stylistic flourishes that often distract from the story.

The thing with Christie is that the plotting is already so solid, you don’t really need the bells and whistles. Especially in a story teeming with victims and suspects.

But it’s too tempting for each successive filmmaker to come along and add their own touch – all well and good, but be more judicious when you have source material that is already complex.

The original story was set in 1939 but this two-part BBC version with a cast of familiar British faces including Industry’s David Jonsson, The Rings of Power’s Morfydd Clark, Shetland’s Douglas Henshall and Downton Abbey’s Penelope Wilton, has moved the action to 1954.

The more significant update comes in the form of Murder is Easy’s lead character, Luke Fitzwilliam. In Christie’s book, he is a retired English detective, in this screen version, he is an attaché from Nigerian, privileged in wealth and class but marginalised by race.

Screenwriter Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre drew from the experiences of her own family to draw the character.

Changing the character’s background makes him a more compelling figure with agency and experience, rather than as mere vehicle for crime-solving.

The rest of the story maintains fidelity to Christie’s story – unlike a 2009 TV episode of Marple which appropriated the story and inserted her into it, changed the killer’s motivation and cast a young Benedict Cumberbatch to do not much.

Murder is Easy is centered on Fitz, who arrives in England to take up a post at Whitehall when he meets Miss Pinkerton on the train. Pinkerton tells him she’s on her way to Scotland Yard to report a serial killer in her village of Wychwood-under-Ashe.

There has been a spate of deaths recently and while they have been ruled as accidents, she’s convinced something, or someone, more sinister is at play. Soon after this conversation, Miss Pinkerton is killed, run down by a Rolls Royce.

Persuaded by Pinkerton’s story and her death, Fitz arrives in Wychwood, and discovers a town full of secrets, resentments and anxiety.

The show deftly uses the story as an engine to explore issues of class, racism and a changing, post-WWII Britain, but it often lacks nuance or subtlety. And favours style over discipline.

Still, for fans of Christie, Murder is Easy captures the most important aspect of the story, the turbulence roiling beneath the surface.

Rating: 3/5

Murder is Easy is streaming on Binge and Fetch from Sunday, June 23