Westport Public Library BOOK blog

St. Mary Mead’s sleuth Miss Jane Marple made her debut in a short story which appeared in The Royal Magazine in December 1927. Her first novel-length case was The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.

She is perhaps the most famous of Agatha Christie's creations, despite appearing only in assorted short stories and twelve full-length novels, and she has been portrayed by almost that many actresses on the screen.

The first “movie” Marple was Margaret Rutherford, starring in Murder, She Said in 1961. Angela Lansbury starred in The Mirror Crack’d in 1980. There were also an Estonian and a Bengali Marple on the big screen.

In 1956, Gracie Fields brought the sleuth to American television audiences, and in the 1980s the legendary Helen Hayes made two Marple films for network television. There was a West German television Marple in the 70s.

There was even a Japanese anime series (2004-2005) that featured both Marple and Poirot.

But the incarnations that have had the greatest critical and popular success were those of Joan Hickson and her successor Geraldine McEwan who appeared in several television dramatizations filmed in England by BBC and ITC beginning in 1984, all of which were viewed in the states on the PBS Mystery program.

Get any group of fans together – even two will do it – and the argument begins. Hickson or McEwan? Who was the best Marple?

There will be yet a third name entered into this competition when Julia McKenzie makes her first appearance as Marple on July 5th on what is now known as the Masterpiece Mystery program. Four episodes are scheduled, all based on original Christie novels, including my all-time favorite Murder is Easy.

McKenzie, 67, says of her new role: "I'm very excited but also slightly daunted by the enormous responsibility that comes with taking on such an iconic role. Just about everybody in the world knows about Miss Marple and has an opinion of what she should be like. So I'm under no illusions about the size of the task ahead. And I suppose I'll have to remind myself how to knit."

Christie’s Poirot also returns – still portrayed so delightfully by David Souchet – for two new episodes based on Christie’s Cat among the Pigeons and Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.

You can read an interview with Souchet on the PBS website that covers a lot of topics, including his similarities to Poirot (they are both perfectionists), their differences (everything else), and Suchet's plans to continue on as the debonair Belgian.

You can find a complete listing of all of Chrisite’s mysteries on the Stop, You’re Killing Me! website, and a complete filmography at IMDb.

Check the PBS website for the complete summer-fall schedule, which will conclude with a new four-part Inspector Lewis series.