Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre has brought the Christie tale to life for the new BBC series.
If you’re a fan of the long list of Agatha Christie novels, chances are that you’ll have spotted some changes to her novels over the years, as they’ve been the basis for countless TV and film adaptations.
In BBC’s Murder Is Easy, though, there are some noticeable changes from the source material – with some aspects remaining to provide an Alfred Hitchcock element to the tale.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press at a screening of the first episode, screenwriter Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre revealed that most notable change is the identity and career of lead character, Luke Fitzwilliam.
She explained: “The lead character is no longer a policeman, I didn’t want him to be a policeman. In the original, obviously Luke Fitzwilliam is a white man, he is a returning colonial police officer from a fictional place.
“Throughout the book, Christie describes him as being ‘brown’. Now, I am a brown woman and when I think about men, I don’t necessarily think about white men initially, and I just started thinking about him as a Black person, pretty much from the get-go.
“We decided to put it in the ‘50s, and my grandfather came over in the ‘30s, and my father came over in the early ‘60s and I really wanted to talk about their experience as Black immigrants in the year where we’re celebrating Windrush, which is a narrative we know very well.
“But to talk about the other Black entries into this country and how that happened. So that is one very obvious change.”
The new series sees Rye Lane‘s David Jonsson take the lead as Luke Fitzwilliam, who isn’t a police officer, but is just a regular man who meets Miss Pinkerton (Penelope Wilton) and is informed of her suspicions about her village murderer.
When she winds up dead herself, Fitzwilliam takes it upon himself to travel to the village to uncover the truth for himself.
Ejiwunmi-Le Berre also continued, talking about other things she changed from the novel: “We conflated quite a lot of characters because it was a very over-populated village, despite all the efforts of the murderer.
“What really struck me about this story is – as well as being a classic whodunnit – it’s also a romance, it’s kind of equally both in a very Hitchcock-y way.
“That’s what I didn’t want to change, I really wanted to run with those strands equally to play with that Hitchcock thing … the screwball comedies and having a duo, a sexy, flirtatious comic duo batting it forwards and back with each other. That’s what we didn’t change, it was always kind of there.”
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Jonsson leads the cast of the two-part series as Fitzwilliam but is also joined by Morfydd Clark (Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) as Bridget, who he comes to have this “flirtatious” relationship with throughout the episodes as she strives to help him in his endeavours.
Speaking about that dynamic, Clark told RadioTimes.com and other press: “My uncle says this Bolivian saying which is ‘The smaller the village, the bigger the hell’. She meets Fitzwilliam and she’s like ‘This hell’s better with you’.”
Other cast members for the series include Mark Bonnar (Guilt) as Reverend Humbleby and Douglas Henshall (Shetland) as Major Horton, among others.
Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy airs on BBC One and iPlayer on Wednesday 27th December at 9pm. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
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