Agatha Christie's Miss Marple - Collection 1

Rating:
Summary: The Archetypal Miss Marple
Review: When Joan Hickson was in her forties, Agatha Christie visited her backstage after a performance and told her, "I want you to play my Miss Marple when you're old enough." And to our great benefit, the late Ms Hickson did just that in a series of classic adaptations, of which this set includes four. Many other great actresses-- Margaret Rutherford, Helen Hayes and Angela Lansbury among the foremost-- have portrayed Miss Marple. And though their interpretations have been enjoyable, they were not true to the books: their Jane Marples were sweet, dithery, eccentric .... and not at all like Christie's character. Joan Hickson, however, is precisely correct: subtle, reserved, kindly but never effusive or finicky; polite but never grandmotherly; and most of all, Hickson perfectly conveys her penetrating observational skill and her keen and active brain. She is a formidable intellect cloaked in the guise of a rather prim but never priggish old lady. As a character in Nemesis, part of set #2 (and perhaps the finest of the whole series-- poetical, almost mythical at times, like a fairy tale) says--"Her camouflage is perfect... her reasoning is flawless, her powers of synthesis formidable; and above all she never lets go." "He called me Nemesis, you know" Miss Marple says, "and he wasn't being entirely humorous." This set includes two of my favorites: The 4:50 from Paddington, and Sleeping Murder; and the remaining two are also fine. The supporting casts are uniformly excellent. And if the DVD quality is not of the finest (a pity, these productions deserve better), if you love Christie, do not hesitate. I have grown to love watching these productions (and indeed those of the Poirot stories with David Suchet) because, not having lived in those times & places, and Christie not being very big on descriptiveness as to setting, I cannot conjure up images of those times & places adequately-- but the productions do it for me. At the end we should rejoice that Ms Hickson lived to make these films, just as we should equally jubilate that Jeremy Brett was spared to complete most of the Holmes canon. Five Stars, unreservedly.