Agatha Christie's Miss Marple - Collection 1

Rating:
Summary: "Brilliance Ruined," by A&E Technical Incompetence
Review: It's surprising that the BBC (or is it ITV?) has not denounced these DVDs and demanded their destruction. The charm of the original made-for-TV films is utterly degraded by incompetent transfer from the originals by A&E. It looks almost as if the master tape was played on a big-screen TV then recorded by a VHS tape recorder using a middling camera with lens lightly smeared with vaseline. One can't even read the text of labels into which the camera pans.

The fault for this travesty lies purely with the transcription - I own VHS tapes recorded in Europe from the telly which have comparatively superb resolution (but which, alas, can only be played on an European TV).

Buy these DVDs only if you are incurably devoted to Joan Dickson's superbly understated performances of Miss Marple's adventures, and are able to pretend you are myopic - or that you have removed your glasses if you already are. Otherwise, save up your money for something less frustrating. Take Sitar lessons, or buy a good book, or a CD of your favorite music. At least they will endure, and be worth revisiting.

Rating:
Summary: Agatha Christie would be ashamed
Review: Joan Hickson is THE Miss Marple. She's perfect in her role. All the other actors are well picked too. These are great episodes, but the simple fact is that these DVDs jsut don't have great visuals. The picture is dark, and you get sort of a musky feel from watching. Stick to the VHS. I hear it's a lot better.

Rating:
Summary: Joan Hickson IS Miss Marple in solid DVD set
Review: Joan Hickson portrays the definitive Miss Marple in this DVD series featuring 4 of the classic PBS and A & E series. With guest stars such as Donald Pleasance, Claire Bloom and Sophie Ward, this set features 4 of her many adventures. The only thing keeping this from getting a 5 star rating is the somewhat grainy prints used for this set. Nevertheless, this a fun and enjoyable mystery romp with Joan Hickson perfectly portraying the elderly, yet sharp sleuth. A must-have for your mystery collection and highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Comments on edits made to stories
Review: Much to my annoyance I found out that at least two of the stories in this set have been edited. For those trying to make a decision whether or not to buy these disks, I have outlined the cuts below:

Sleeping Murder - intact: no cuts.
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side - appears to be intact.

4.50 from Paddington - edited: 5 mins 11 secs
Scenes edited are:
* Miss Marple and Mrs McGillicuddy directly after the latter arrives at Miss Marple's where she talks about how the people on the railway wouldn't believe a word she said about what she saw on the train(30 secs)
* Miss Marple collects the mail after it has been dropped off by the postman (13 secs)
* A continuation of the conversation between Lucy Eylesbarrow and Emma Crackenthorpe as they walk down the hall after the former arrives there where they discuss the imminent arrival of the rest of the family and the peculiarities of the family will / Emma introduces Lucy to Mrs Kidder (the cook) / Dr Quimper leaving and chatting to Emma / Mrs Kidder leaving for the day and Lucy asking if she minds if she does a bit of tidying up / Lucy cleaning the kitchen (3 mins 10 sec)
* Dr Qumper walking with Inspector Slack away from the barn watched by the two boys / Slack talking to Quimper about the family (1 min 26 secs)

As you can see substantial edits here that actually affect what information we receive about the will, plus the removal of chunks of character development - grrr.

A Caribbean Mystery - edited: 3 mins 54 secs
Scenes edited are:
* Man setting up lantern on raft - a continuation of this scene where he jumps in boat and starts back / Miss Marple meeting Victoria / Tim greeting Miss Marple and discussing with her whether or not she would prefer an English-style meal for dinner, as Jason Rafiel enters (1 min 13 secs)
* Miss Marple unable to sleep (12 secs)
* Molly returning to dinner covered in blood after she finds Victoria and breaking down (1 min 3 secs)
* Greg Dyson the beach / Evelyn Hillingdon talking to Miss Marple (26 secs)
* Inspector Weston arriving at Victoria's funeral / singing at funeral (25 sec)
* Jason Rafiel watching Miss Marple approach and inviting her to tea, to which Miss Marple responds that she was coming to see him anyway (21 secs)
* Miss Marple folding linen as she packs to leave (4 secs)
* Inspector Weston with Miss Marple and Molly after the murderer is caught (10 secs)

The cuts here are not as severe except for the ones concerning Victoria (they establish Miss marples relationship with her) and the one with Molly returning to dinner where she finally cracks.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best....
Review: Oh I love Hercule Poirot, but Miss Marple is simply the best. She is a "noticing kind of person" and I wish she was my aunt. Thank you A&E for recording these films on DVD. They are excellent. At least the copies I bought are excellent.

This volume of the Miss Marple stories (hopefully there will be more) contains several of my favorite stories including "The 4:50 from Paddington" which was first published as "What Miss McGillicutty Saw." Margaret Rutherford starred in a version of the story back in the 1940s. Johanna David (the first "Rebecca" and mother of the second "Rebecca") plays in "4:50" -- which involves a mysterious death on a train. Was the victim strangled as Miss McGillicutty says or wasn't she. Miss Marple insists the murder happened, and when the local police fail to fully investigate the crime, she takes matters into her own hands. "In a few weeks Inspector, one of us will admit that he was wrong" she tells her nemesis a police officer who turns up in several of the stories.

And speaking of "Nemesis", Christie's story of this title is included in this volume though it is called "Caribbean Mystery." I read "Nemesis" when was first published and at that time I had no idea drugs could be such a problem. In "Caribbean Mystery" Miss Marple has been bundled off to Jamaica because her nephew felt she needed a break from the English weather. She finds the island boring until folks start dropping dead.

The DVD also includes "The Sleeping Muder" and "The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side." The latter has been remade several times, once with Elizabeth Taylor, but I think this one is the best. Claire Bloom plays the aging actress who is attempting a comeback after a bout with drugs and alcohol. BBC/PBS fans will recognize the first murder victim as one of the "flower" sisters on "Keeping Up Appearances" and the secretary is played by Elizabeth Garvey who appeared as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1980s version of "Pride and Prejudice."

Englihs mystery lovers, BBC fans, and Anglophiles should enjoy these films down to the last detail. Typical of BBC productions, the film are realistically done with vintage trains, cars, buses, planes, houses, gardens, clothing, etc.

Rating:
Summary: Great series, but...
Review: The BBC's MISS MARPLE series is at last getting a DVD release, but A&E aren't giving it the launch that it deserves. The picture quality of these four discs vary greatly, and no clean-up work appears to have been done, (some sections of the films are full of dirt and specs). Although all the MISS MARPLE stories are available in both episodic and feature-length formats, only one of these adventures is as originally braodcast on the BBC, (THE MIRROR CRACK'D): the other three seem to have been compiled from their respective two-part versions - leading to new, video-generated captions for the story titles, (which rather ruin the effect of the wonderful opening sequence). Further more, 4.50 FROM PADDINGTON lacks about three minutes of footage, (nothing very important, but irritating).
Surely A&E could spend just that little bit extra, get some new transfers from the BBC and release programmes properly???

Rating:
Summary: Best in Every Category
Review: The entire Joan Hickson Miss Marple series is superbly done in every way. Casting is excellent, acting is seamless, the music is enjoyable and appropriate to every scene and character. My wife and I view these over and over again. In all the productions there is only one we do not care for and that is in Collection 2: They Do it With Mirrors. Perhaps there the story is our problem and not the production. Otherwise we recommend every one without reservation and would suggest that others judge for themselves on the one title we, personally, avoid.

Rating:
Summary: Falsely advertised, but a good set of flicks
Review: There she sits: A white-haired lady dressed in tweeds, a pair of knitting needles in her lap, more interested in village gossip than in the goings-on of the world at large - and out of nothing, she utters sentences like that.

For more likely than not, another murder has been committed; and Miss Jane Marple, elderly spinster from the village of St. Mary Mead, just happens to find herself near the scene of the crime. And also more likely than not, while the police are still toddling around searching for clues she'll find the solution - relying on her ever-unfailing "village parallels;" those seemingly innocuous incidents of village life making up the sum of Miss Marple's knowledge of human nature, to which she routinely turns in unmasking even the cleverest killer. "Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner - Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is the more dangerous," already observes Vicar Clement, the narrator of Miss Marple's first adventure, 1930's "Murder at the Vicarage" (the small screen version of which is unfortunately not part of this first set, which features four post-WWII stories, but of the second set, which reunites three pre-war mysteries with 1952's "They Do It With Mirrors" and 1971's "Nemesis," the sequel to this set's episode "A Caribbean Mystery").

Originally airing on TV in the 1980s, the BBC's adaptations of Agatha Christie's twelve Miss Marple novels featured Joan Hickson in the title role; quickly establishing her as the quintessential Miss Marple even in the view of the grandmother (or rather, grand-aunt) of all village sleuths and "noticing kinds of persons"'s creator, Dame Agatha herself. (After seeing Hickson in an adaptation of her "Appointment With Death," as early as 1946 Christie reportedly sent her a note expressing the hope she would "play my dear Miss Marple.") Prior realizations, partly involving rather high-octane casts, had seen as Miss Marple, inter alia, Angela Lansbury and Margaret Rutherford, but had been decidedly less faithful to Christie's books. While Lansbury holds her own fairly well when compared to the character's literary original in 1980's "Hollywood does Christie" version of "The Mirror Crack'd" (and that movie's ageing actresses' showdown featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak is a delight to watch) the four movies starring Rutherford are only loosely based on Christie's books: Dame Margaret's Miss Marple, although itself likewise a splendid performance, has about as much to do with Agatha Christie's demure and seemingly scatterbrained village sleuth as Big Ben does with the English countryside, and of the scripts, only "Murder, She Said" is an adaptation of a Miss Marple mystery ("4:50 From Paddington"), whereas two of the others - "Murder at the Gallop" and "Murder Most Foul" - are actually Hercule Poirot stories ("After the Funeral" and "Mrs. McGinty's Dead," respectively), and "Murder Ahoy" is based on a completely independent screenplay.

Following the rule that ever since Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade every great private detective needs a policeman he can outwit, the creators of the BBC series inserted the character of Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) into almost all of the storylines - hardly in keeping with the literary originals, which are set over a period of more than 30 years and thus, exceed the career span of a policeman already advanced on his professional path at the time of his first encounter with Miss Marple; even if the BBC's Slack is promoted from D.I. in "Murder at the Vicarage" to Superintendent in "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side." Yet, Hickson's and Horovitch's face-offs are a fun addition; and one is almost ready to pity Slack, who hardly ever gets a foot down vis-a-vis Miss Marple's quick rejoinders and, in the words of her friend, retired Scotland Yard chief Sir Henry Clithering, "wonderful gift to state the obvious." (During a conversation with Inspector Craddock in "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side," Slack - whom Miss Marple herself, in the TV adaptation of "Murder at the Vicarage," has already likened to a railway diesel engine, or in that story's literary original to a shoe vendor intent on selling you patent leather boots while completely ignoring your request for brown calf leather instead - unaware that he is talking to one of Aunt Jane's nephews, rather unsubtly credits her with having "a mind like a meat cleaver.")

Of the four episodes contained here, three are based on fairly well-known mysteries:

In 1957's "4:50 From Paddington" Miss Marple seeks the help of professional housekeeper Lucy Eyelesbarrow to investigate the murder of a woman, whom the village sleuth's friend Mrs. McGillicuddy has seen being strangled from a passing train, and whose body must have disappeared somewhere on the grounds of the Crackenthorpe family estate Rutherford Hall. (In the original, this, too, is a story featuring Inspector Craddock, not Slack.)

1962's "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side" (whose title is based on a line from Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott") revisits the grounds of Gossington Hall, erstwhile home to Miss Marple's friend Dolly Bantry, who has sold the estate to ageing Hollywood star Marina Gregg. At a charity benefit, the charity's secretary is found dead - and much points to Miss Gregg as the intended victim.

"A Caribbean Mystery" (1965) sees Miss Marple in a for her most unusual West Indian setting, solving the murder of Major Palgrave, who was killed in an attempt to prevent him from foiling his murderer's even more sinister intentions. This episode also establishes the title of its sequel "Nemesis," although in the original it is Miss Marple herself, not her new friend, rich old Mr. Rafiel, who names her thus.

"Sleeping Murder" (1976) finally was Christie's last Miss Marple story; although it is less the old lady herself than newly-weds Giles and Gwenda Reed who act as detectives, with Miss Marple's help trying to get to the bottom of Gwenda's unsettling visions relating to their new home, which she conceivably cannot have known previously, and a murder occurring there over 20 years earlier.

Rating:
Summary: "It is dangerous to believe people. I haven't for years ..."
Review: There she sits: A white-haired lady dressed in tweeds, a pair of knitting needles in her lap, more interested in village gossip than in the goings-on of the world at large - and out of nothing, she utters sentences like that.

For more likely than not, another murder has been committed; and Miss Jane Marple, elderly spinster from the village of St. Mary Mead, just happens to find herself near the scene of the crime. And also more likely than not, while the police are still toddling around searching for clues she'll find the solution - relying on her ever-unfailing "village parallels;" those seemingly innocuous incidents of village life making up the sum of Miss Marple's knowledge of human nature, to which she routinely turns in unmasking even the cleverest killer. "Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner - Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is the more dangerous," already observes Vicar Clement, the narrator of Miss Marple's first adventure, 1930's "Murder at the Vicarage" (the small screen version of which is unfortunately not part of this first set, which features four post-WWII stories, but of the second set, which reunites three pre-war mysteries with 1952's "They Do It With Mirrors" and 1971's "Nemesis," the sequel to this set's episode "A Caribbean Mystery").

Originally airing on TV in the 1980s, the BBC's adaptations of Agatha Christie's twelve Miss Marple novels featured Joan Hickson in the title role; quickly establishing her as the quintessential Miss Marple even in the view of the grandmother (or rather, grand-aunt) of all village sleuths and "noticing kinds of persons"'s creator, Dame Agatha herself. (After seeing Hickson in an adaptation of her "Appointment With Death," as early as 1946 Christie reportedly sent her a note expressing the hope she would "play my dear Miss Marple.") Prior realizations, partly involving rather high-octane casts, had seen as Miss Marple, inter alia, Angela Lansbury and Margaret Rutherford, but had been decidedly less faithful to Christie's books. While Lansbury holds her own fairly well when compared to the character's literary original in 1980's "Hollywood does Christie" version of "The Mirror Crack'd" (and that movie's ageing actresses' showdown featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak is a delight to watch) the four movies starring Rutherford are only loosely based on Christie's books: Dame Margaret's Miss Marple, although itself likewise a splendid performance, has about as much to do with Agatha Christie's demure and seemingly scatterbrained village sleuth as Big Ben does with the English countryside, and of the scripts, only "Murder, She Said" is an adaptation of a Miss Marple mystery ("4:50 From Paddington"), whereas two of the others - "Murder at the Gallop" and "Murder Most Foul" - are actually Hercule Poirot stories ("After the Funeral" and "Mrs. McGinty's Dead," respectively), and "Murder Ahoy" is based on a completely independent screenplay.

Following the rule that ever since Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade every great private detective needs a policeman he can outwit, the creators of the BBC series inserted the character of Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) into almost all of the storylines - hardly in keeping with the literary originals, which are set over a period of more than 30 years and thus, exceed the career span of a policeman already advanced on his professional path at the time of his first encounter with Miss Marple; even if the BBC's Slack is promoted from D.I. in "Murder at the Vicarage" to Superintendent in "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side." Yet, Hickson's and Horovitch's face-offs are a fun addition; and one is almost ready to pity Slack, who hardly ever gets a foot down vis-a-vis Miss Marple's quick rejoinders and, in the words of her friend, retired Scotland Yard chief Sir Henry Clithering, "wonderful gift to state the obvious." (During a conversation with Inspector Craddock in "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side," Slack - whom Miss Marple herself, in the TV adaptation of "Murder at the Vicarage," has already likened to a railway diesel engine, or in that story's literary original to a shoe vendor intent on selling you patent leather boots while completely ignoring your request for brown calf leather instead - unaware that he is talking to one of Aunt Jane's nephews, rather unsubtly credits her with having "a mind like a meat cleaver.")

Of the four episodes contained here, three are based on fairly well-known mysteries:

In 1957's "4:50 From Paddington" Miss Marple seeks the help of professional housekeeper Lucy Eyelesbarrow to investigate the murder of a woman, whom the village sleuth's friend Mrs. McGillicuddy has seen being strangled from a passing train, and whose body must have disappeared somewhere on the grounds of the Crackenthorpe family estate Rutherford Hall. (In the original, this, too, is a story featuring Inspector Craddock, not Slack.)

1962's "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side" (whose title is based on a line from Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott") revisits the grounds of Gossington Hall, erstwhile home to Miss Marple's friend Dolly Bantry, who has sold the estate to ageing Hollywood star Marina Gregg. At a charity benefit, the charity's secretary is found dead - and much points to Miss Gregg as the intended victim.

"A Caribbean Mystery" (1965) sees Miss Marple in a for her most unusual West Indian setting, solving the murder of Major Palgrave, who was killed in an attempt to prevent him from foiling his murderer's even more sinister intentions. This episode also establishes the title of its sequel "Nemesis," although in the original it is Miss Marple herself, not her new friend, rich old Mr. Rafiel, who names her thus.

"Sleeping Murder" (1976) finally was Christie's last Miss Marple story; although it is less the old lady herself than newly-weds Giles and Gwenda Reed who act as detectives, with Miss Marple's help trying to get to the bottom of Gwenda's unsettling visions relating to their new home, which she conceivably cannot have known previously, and a murder occurring there over 20 years earlier.

Rating:
Summary: Agatha Christie's Miss Marple - Collection 1
Review: We are long time fans of the PBS Mystery series and feel that Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, David Suchet as Hercule Poirot and Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes are all great series and should all be collected. My husband and I like to sit with a glass of wine, a plate of cheeses and a great mystery movie.. These series are great!..