Murder Is Easy review: This finger-wagging read about colonialism treats nostalgia for Agatha Christie’s Britain as a thought crime, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Murder Is Easy (BBC One, last night)

Assessment:

Christmas presents come in two varieties: those we want and those a disapproving family member tells us to get, such as socks, underpants and… murder is easy (BBC1).

Our Aunt Beeb can’t stand us enjoying murders in a 1950s village. All those spinners driving to church through the morning fog, rosy-cheeked blacksmiths and boys playing cricket on the lawn – it’s so very English it must be wrong.

So instead of giving us the Agatha Christie adaptation we want, Auntie comes up with something else that will be “better for us”. It’s like serving a tofu turkey and insisting, “It tastes just as good and saves the world.”

That means turning a pre-war story from the Golden Age of British crime fiction into what director Meenu Gaur calls “a great allegorical story about colonialism.”

The detective is a young black man newly arrived from Nigeria who claims to be researching local folklore when in fact he is investigating a series of murders.

In Wychwood under Ashe, it’s 1954 and local residents are being murdered so quickly that the coroner can’t keep up. Death certificates are distributed in pairs.

Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it yet: the innkeeper drowns, a runaway servant swallows poison, the window cleaner falls off a parapet, and the lovely old lady investigating these deaths (Penelope Wilton) is hit by a car .

So far so good. But according to author Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre, there are crimes worse than murder.

The village is a hotbed of racism. Our detective Luke Fitzwilliam (David Jonsson) only has to walk into a bar to silence the whole place. The innkeeper makes mocking remarks about “mud huts” and the doctor distributes tracts about the purification of the white master race.

“Do you see it now?” murmured Aunt Beeb. “This is what your dear English village really looked like.” All fascists.’

This is a 21st century left lecture, centered on the belief that post-war Britain was a truly terrible country and that we should all be ashamed of it. Nostalgia is a thought crime.

The opening scenes of this diptych were not inspired by Agatha Christie, but by the West African legend of a man who becomes invisible to hunt.

“Being part of another culture made up of empire and colonialism,” says Gaur, “becomes part of us when people become invisible.”

In a dream sequence, Fitzwilliam is seen with an ebony artifact called Ikenga, a figurine with two horns, which he drops while being chased through a forest.

The detective is a young black man who has just arrived from Nigeria and claims to be investigating local folklore when in fact he is investigating a series of murders.

This is a left-wing lecture based on the belief that post-war Britain was a truly terrible country and that we should all be ashamed of it.

Our detective Luke Fitzwilliam (David Jonsson) only has to walk into a bar to silence the whole place.

In tonight’s second episode, he reveals that the Ikenga represents a man’s sense of self and destiny. He also sneaks into his master’s study, where he is shocked to discover a collection of African masks, fetishes and carvings – cultural treasures that are clearly the spoils of the empire.

This is not the first time that the BBC’s distaste for Christie has been evident. The 2015 version of And Then There Were None was full of nudity, while the following Christmas version of Witness For The Prosecution saw David Haig play a senior barrister who unleashed a barrage of four-letter words in the Old Bailey courtroom.

In 2020, the plot of The Pale Horse, admittedly not one of Dame Agatha’s best, was extensively rewritten – with the result that it was even worse than the book.

But no rewrite has gone as far as this reimagining of Murder Is Easy, and countless details ring false. Some are comical: Fitzwilliam is grudgingly accepted by the locals when he dons a bow tie and smoking jacket, as if these were the hallmarks of a gentleman.

Fitzwilliam is grudgingly accepted by the locals when he dons a bow tie and tuxedo jacket, as if it were the ultimate mark of a gentleman

Some are contradictory: village doctor Dr. Thomas (Mathew Baynton) is a sycophant who refuses to give proper treatment to those who cannot pay. It might have been plausible in 1939 when Christie wrote Murder Is Easy, but the adaptation was pushed back to the NHS era. The doctor’s bias doesn’t make sense now.

Some are lazy: Morfydd Clark, the flirtatious Bridget, calls herself a “Seckerterry”, which was definitely not the 1950s pronunciation of “secretary”, and Fitzwilliam addresses her as Mrs. Conway, not Miss. And some are just bizarre: When Fitzwilliam arrives at the villa, he is attacked by a bird of prey, a red kite. Red kites became extinct in England in the 1950s – perhaps the author was thinking of herring gulls?

At least he has a good cast as Christmas Christie. Douglas Henshall is particularly entertaining as an old fart who served in Africa, and Mark Bonnar made the most of his role as Reverend Humbleby by dropping dead at a dinner party, recovering and dying again on the tennis court. fall.

We’ll find out tonight if he’s definitely dead this time.