Strong and Moving!

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Ah! Agatha Christie always loved using nursery rhymes in her novels, and A Pocket Full of Rye is no exception. There is a lot going on in this mystery when ex Fortescue dies in his office with seeds of rye found in his pocket. soon another death takes place, and then another. Miss Marple arrives as she trained the awkward girl Gladys as a servant - who, it seemed, tried to ring her up. Gladys really is the key to the whole mystery. Again we get glorious Joan Hickson playing the senior sleuth to perfection. e also get some truly good character acting turns from the likes of Tom Wilkinson(yes, the Academy Award Nominated actor who has now turned to major star) as, for a change, a nice police inspector who wants Miss Marple's help. Elderly, and I mean old looking, Fabia Drake with some great dialog as the deceased man's sister-in-law, and how about Selina Cadell(Mrs. Tishel from Doc Martin) as the house-manageress Miss Dove with some splendid dialog as well. This really is a very well-crafted murder mystery and generally well-directed version. I particularly liked the by-play between Miss Marple and Detective Inspector Neele.

Although I wouldn't classify "A Pocketfull Of Rye" as one of Agatha Christie's best stories, it still keeps your interest; there is a variation on the "ABC Murders" theme (the killer hiding the one and only murder that is important to him / her among a series of seemingly related murders), and a pretty clever solution to the problem of "murder via long distance"! I must admit that my favorite part of this film is by far Selina Cadell as Mary Dove, the efficient housekeeper. Smart, sarcastic, observant - she is the thinking man's ideal wife. I particularly loved the scene where she confesses to some "minor discrepancies in the home accounting"! I just wish she had more to do in the second half. Second favorite is Fabia Drake as Miss Henderson, who has some of the best lines: "I have ALWAYS been very peculiar" and "The journey between Vice and Evil is but a step". And third favorite is Tom Wilkinson as Inspector Neele, a likable, level-headed fellow who is quicker to appreciate the value of Miss Marple's contributions than a certain Inspector Slack! (***)

I recall a British TV series some years back entitled "J'Accuse" the purpose of which was to demolish certain popular sacred cows. They were programmes designed to delight of infuriate according to the predilections of the viewer. From my point of view I was in agreement with the treatment given to "Citizen Kane" but when it came to Laurence Olivier and Agatha Christie, definitely "Non!". As a youngster I devoured practically everything Dame Agatha produced and she remains to this day for my money the absolute mistress of the surprise "Who dun it" particularly when many of the more recent exponents of the genre are running to works of near Dickensian length. Christie needed little more than 200 pages for each of her superb plots, ideal when all you are looking for is a half-day divertissement rather than a complex literary work. For many years her novels seemed to defy good cinematic adaptation. The Rene Clair version of "Ten Little Niggers" worked reasonably well as it had a good cast, bags of atmosphere and stayed fairly true to the book. But then it was remade a couple of times in more exotic locations with disastrous results, the essential ingredient of claustrophobia missing. That was the trouble, Agatha was quintessentially English and cosy with little pretensions to humour. Attempt to make her funny and you have those dire Margaret Rutherford - Miss Marple films that have dated to the extent of becoming excruciatingly embarrassing. Several actors have tackled Poirot with varying results but perhaps it is the very unreality and quirkiness of the character that make the part so difficult to play. Certainly David Suchet is more watchable than Ustinov, Finney and Molina. Miss Marple is a different matter. It just needed to find that someone who could convey the frailty of an elderly spinster with a razor sharp mind that could detect evil in the most unlikely. No wonder that the hammy humour of the well-built Rutherford was so wide of the mark. Angela Lansbury got much closer in the star-studded "The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side", so much so that it seemed that a passable Marple had been discovered. But the film was a one-off and it was only in retrospect after the casting of Joan Hickson in the TV series of the 'eighties and early 'nineties that one realised that Lansbury was not quite right for the part. Hickson however was another matter, casting so inspired that it seemed that she had been waiting all her life of mainly bit-parts as crotchety landladies and barmaids for a role she was just born to play. (See my comments on the 1999 TV adaptation of "David Copperfield" where much the same thing happened for several British stars.) It is the absolute rightness of Hickson in the Marple role that makes this series of twelve easily the best visualisations of Christie's work, that and their faithful recreations of their author's time and place. "A Pocket Full of Rye" is very typical being somewhere between what was easily the best - the brilliantly plotted "A Murder is Announced" with some wonderful supporting roles - and the weakest - "They do it with Mirrors" - where the plot is much less interesting than usual. It enjoys that favourite Christie device of a series of deaths linked with the events of a nursery rhyme, the motivation of money which features in well over half her stories and a plot in which what happens in the present has its roots deeply embedded in the past. It is this latter feature that links her work to that of the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In both practically everything of significance has happened years before the curtain rises. The past therefore has to be explored in order to explain the present. No wonder that it needed a Miss Marple with the attributes of one who seems to be quietly ferreting away in the background to discover past secrets to make the character absolutely credible. It cannot be done through caricature as Joan Hickson so admirably realised.

Probably the least interesting of the BBC TV adaptions; and one of the few unavailable on DVD for some reason. The only really entertaining parts come from the formidable elderly actress Fabia Drake, who plays "Miss Henderson". She wanders around making stern condemning comments; the best comes when the ditzy young blonde wife makes a comment about going to the Clubhouse (located on a nearby golf-course as I recall). Miss Henderson gives a loud sniff, and mutters "Clubhouse! .... WHOREhouse!" which always leaves me in stitches. Otherwise its not that memorable; I can't recall if the book itself was very interesting to begin with. Its fun to see Tom Wilkinson in a younger role.