Agatha Christie's Marple: Series 1 (2005) Review

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(More customer reviews)I watched the new Miss Marple series, excited to see what Geraldine McEwan would do with the role. Unfortunately, I don't like what they've done with this latest batch of Christie's. Mrs. McEwan is a fine actress and she brings a "fluffiness" to the role that is missing from the Hickson version. Still, there is too much tampering with the plotlines to suit me. There are significant changes made in a couple of the stories, most notably in "The Body in the Library" so let the buyer beware. This isn't a minor change either as it involves the resolution of the case. They also add an odd, on-going storyline involving Miss Marple's own past love life that is simply not part of the books and isn't even close to being in keeping with the character of Miss Marple. As Agatha Christie is arguably the most acclaimed and accomplished mystery writer that ever lived, these changes were pretty outrageous. Her books stand the test of time and need no updating simply to satisfy 21st century ideas. I was surprised at this as the British are usually the ones who can be depended upon to leave good stories alone. So, if you just want a few hours of light entertainment, have at it, but if you're an Agatha Christie purist, you won't like this dvd so save your money.

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She's back! Proper, demure, and sharp as a tack, Agatha Christie's beloved Miss Marple returns to the limelight in sparkling new adaptations of four classic Christie novels. Geraldine McEwan (The Magdalene Sisters, Mapp & Lucia) is the ladylike sleuth, a wispy senior citizen who blows the police professionals out of the water with her keen insight and shrewdly analytical nature. Fearless and uncommonly wise to the worst in human nature, Marple has lived a long time-and she's paid attention. As seen on the PBS Mystery! series, these lavish 21st-century productions are rich in post-WWII period atmosphere and delicious Christie wit, with star-studded casts that include Joanna Lumley, Derek Jacobi, Tara Fitzgerald, Ian Richardson, Janet McTeer, Zok Wanamaker, Simon Callow, James Fox, John Hannah, and Celia Imrie. The Mysteries: Murder at the Vicarage The Body in the Library A Murder Is Announced 4:50 From Paddington DVD special features include an hour-long behind-the-scenes featurette with cast and crew interviews, a history of Miss Marple adaptations, a photo gallery and more.

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Five Days (HBO Miniseries) (2008) Review

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(More customer reviews)FIVE DAYS is a slow moving but ultimately rewarding British miniseries that tells the story of a drawn-out policy inquiry through a different sort of dramatic lens. Each hourlong episode focuses on a different day of the case, the first two close together, the third a disconcertingly long time later, the fourth on a day when public interest in the case has nearly lapsed, and the fifth a year after the original police report. Screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes sets her tale in a British suburb, apparently normal on the outside, but inwardly torn by seething disputes, broken families, and long-simmering racial tensions. Beautiful Leanne Wellings seems to have it all, happiness with a handsome second husband, three beautiful children (two under eight years of age, and a teenaged girl), and a family heavily invested in community and heritage. When she stops her car on sn impulse to buy some flowers for her ailing grandfather, and leaves her two youngest in the car while she hops across the road, the tension begins right there. Somehow, you imagine, somebody is going to nab the kids right out of the car while Leanne is picking out flowers from the strange makeshift gypsy trailer parked in the "Lay-by" not fifty yards from a bustling expressway. But what happens, while shocking, is not what you would suppose!
Everything you thought about any of the characters in part one gets turned on its head by episodes two and three. The seeming closeness of Leanne's family is just an illusion, and the fact that Leanne's second husband Matt is black serves as a bombshell for revealing much about the prejudice lurking behind the white picket fences of modern day suburbia. David Oyelowo, whom we last saw in Kenneth Branagh's AS YOU LIKE IT and in THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, has a field day playing embittered, passionate Matt, despised by his slutty stepdaughter Tanya and desired both by a socialminded neighbor and a policewoman drawn to him against her common sense and warnings by her superiors.
Leanne's mother and father are in their own private hell, too, as their gradual distrust of Matt builds up into a tremendous holocaust of hate and fear for the kids. Patrick Malahide and Penelope Wilton build up thoroughly detailed portraits of these two, written by Hughes as if by Edward Albee on a really scathing day, and when you see Wilton break down at a televised press conference, able to utter only syllables and gasps, you will be thinking of Artaud or Nijinsky, while Malahide does his own transformation scene later on in the series. But you know who steals the show, the unbelievably ribald and honest Janet McTeer as Detective Sergeant Amy Foster, a veteran cop who's been on the job far too long to have stayed 100 percent human. She's counting down the days to the retirement and her farewell speech is among the most remarkable pieces of acting you will ever witness.
FIVE DAYS is flawed--the directors seem to have forgotten really to keep the suspense going throughout the entire length of the show--and some characters wind up spinning their wheels in familiar kitchen sink postures of deep kitsch. In addition, you might suppose that the race issue finally becomes too complex for them to deal with, and they scurry away from it into an absurd solution lifted from an old Jean Claude Van Damme direct to video "movie," but don't let these minor flaws deter you from watching this sleeper all the way to the end.


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A mother, Leanne, vanishes into thin air. Her children, abandoned in her car, also go missing. As police search for clues over three gut-wrenching months, the Leanne's husband and family learn that nobody's quite what they seem. Everyone is a suspect. In the end, five days prove critical in solving the case in this five-part, five-hour thriller.

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