It is difficult to understand ITV's decision to remake the Miss Marple series, because in Joan Hickson we have the definitive interpretation of Agatha Christie's amateur sleuth. This particular story, Miss Marple's first fictional outing,dates from 1930, but the writer, T.R. Bowen has skilfully updated it to the 1950s. The script is witty and the cast is endowed with such acting stalwarts as Paul Eddington and Rosalie Crutchley. If the plot does not seem so original now it is because Christie's work was so often copied, and what must have seemed innovative in 1930 now appears to be hackneyed. All that said it is a story well told and worth a couple of hours of anyone's time.
