The best-selling mystery novel of all time, apparently. A rather hoary old stage chestnut is now brought to the Boxing Day table with its revised PC title, but most of its other thirties prejudices intact. A group of disparates are summoned to 'Soldier Island' off the Devon coast for a rendezvous billed as a dinner party. In the comfortable but eerily deserted environs of the island's hotel, they hear a recorded broadcast accusing them all of committing (separate) murders. By the end of the hour there were eight of the ten remaining alive.
Just about as perfect a holiday drama as you could wish for, following in the wake of this year's successful play adaptations of classics. Rather darker somehow than the Poirots or Marples, and went down very well with a tipple.
Tommy (David Walliams) and Tuppence (Jessica Raine) are a couple who embark on amateur detective adventures in the 1950s in this BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie's dwarfed-by-Poirot/Marple novels. For the three people remaining in the English-speaking world who still haven't heard of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa, she had a mind for murder like few others, and millions have whiled away a cosy afternoon or evening reading about stabbings, strangulation and poison. Murder may appeal, but coupled with 1930s or 1950s settings and costumes and the attendant traditional trappings of a country house, or a steam train, and the mysteries are irresistible to large swathes of the population. Readers and viewers don't expect too much gore, and hardly any realism at all, and they are rarely disappointed.
'Partners in Crime' will have pleased its target audience, we think it fair to say. Dan is not fond of the elderly lady with the knitting, nor ze little man wiz ze grey cells, but even he found this watchable and has made a note for Sunday evenings. The nonsense plot, as always, turns on rather unlikely coincidences and some deeply unpleasant types, but the Beresfords are enjoyably batty - even if Walliams is too Walliams to be entirely Tommy - and good on the writers to keep them of their time in their so-hideous-it's-wonderful interior design and their boarding-school son. The script has (adds?) a soupcon of wit, Jessica Raine is wonderful as Tuppence and the production looks gorgeous. Is the licence fee worth it? How can you ask?! We're already hoping for a Christmas special.
