caviar1234 As many negative reviews as this series has received for taking too much liberty of Dame Agatha Christie's original work, I must admit that I find it quite enjoyable to watch. I personally don't mind it changed some of Dame Agatha's below-average original novels, and find a few of these adaptions quite interesting and even can be said as an improvement of to the original, especially for her late work such as At Bertram's Hotel, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Nemesis and so on. The only one in my opinion goes way too far is Murder Is Easy. The incest element in this story could have made a decent episode of Midsomer Murders, but it's never for Agatha Christie adaptions and never will be! As for the cast, I like the portray of both McEwan and McKenzie, but find the two actresses too much of a contrary to each other, especially for the same character in a consecutive TV series. As for regular writers, Kevin Elyot's scripts are always relatively faithful ones, but sometimes it makes the film feel rather dull, most notably being A Pocket Full of Rye. Stewart Harcourt could always do some interesting changes while keeping the core of the original stories, I like most of his work except for Ordeal By Innocence. Paul Rutman wrote two episodes with quite different styles: They Do It with Mirrors is a rather faithful adaption to the original story, while The Secret of Chimneys is a total rewrite! As for Stephen Churchett, he's the one that brings many of his own ideas to the source material, sometimes they work to me, such as Nemesis and The Sittaford Mystery, and sometimes they don't, most notably being Sleeping Murder and, of course, Murder Is Easy, due to their incest themes. But dare I say that as many people might criticize this series for its "reinventing" attempts, I still praise ITV's courage of trying to seek a new way to make Christie's work being accepted to the audience, despite the controversial feed backs.

pirslya well, I haven't really read any books of Agatha Christie (except The Death on the Nile) and as a viewer, I found this series so enjoyable! and my favorite Miss Marple is Geraldine McEwan because i thought she amused me kind of sad she didn't continue but it's understandable! when the plot was sometimes didn't really work on me, I thought it's something that made me want to watch it more and ended up wanting to watch more. It's one of the first British TV series that I watched, and it's something that I wouldn't regret. Ms. Marple is such an unique and authentic character, and it's kind of unfortunate she didn't as popular as Poirot.

veronicammartin I don't like the Geraldine McEwan series because of the changes that are made to cater to modern ideals don't fit into the era in which the books are written.In this series, so many of these books are changed to have homosexual TV characters which had they been modern stories would be permissible but they are n't modern stories. These are 1930's - 1950s stories and the characters aren't even in the books. Some of the TV stories are just completely changed by this. In fact, My friends renamed 'The Body in the library' as 'The lesbians in the library' ! The Sittaford Mystery suddenly has the two women go off together to Argentina! Why add this when it isn't even in the books? Agatha Christie is superb and can stand alone without any character and plot changes . Leave these stories how they were meant to be, how they were actually written. Don't introduce or change the sexuality of characters to cater for modern viewers.It changes the feel of the book.Awful.

benosler Geraldine McEwan was a young looking 70-yr-old woman when she started making this series. For this part she was trying to be older which is all too obvious. She also speaks in a most peculiar and affected way; as though she is trying to put on a crusty accent but failing to do it without looking as though a great deal of effort is involved. It all adds up to terrible acting which could be forgiven were other actors pulling their weight. Unfortunately this is not the case. There are many "guest actors" (putting it politely) throughout the series who come from other backgrounds. Russ Abbot is a terrible comedian but a truly dismal actor and almost the same can be said for Dawn French. The whole series is rife with "jobs for the boys" (and girls) and this does Agatha Christie's stories a gross injustice. Don't bother with this series. It is absolutely abysmal. Yes, production techniques had improved by the noughties and yes... there are many lush flashback scenes that one doesn't find in earlier adaptations but this is not enough to make up for the sheer lack of any acting worth its salt. Instead of wasting time watching this series I'd urge anyone to watch the 1980s production instead with Joan Hickson playing the main part. It may be a bit dated but it's full of real actors who take a pride in their profession rather that egotists who are all trying to steal the limelight at the same time.