McEwan's portrayal of Marple is markedly different from that of Joan Hickson, thought to have been the definitive. You can almost imagine my grandmother chewing the end of her pen and wondering whether she could have done it differently.' Matthew Pritchard, Christie's grandson, approved the changes. The rewrite was made, the producers said, because the original plot would not resonate with a modern audience. There is a sexual twist that was absent from the book. Viewers will notice the case of the missing 'Miss': to match ITV's other set-piece Christie whodunnit, Poirot, only Jane Marple's surname features in the title.Ī more substantial update involves a change in identity of one of the two killers responsible for the eponymous body in the library. We have filled in some gaps,' said Mr Timmer. 'If you read the books she's unshockable, but you have to ask yourself where that comes from. In this adaptation, however, she empathises with the passions of other characters, including the murderers, because she has experienced the same emotions. 'Previous Miss Marples have been rather pious and judgmental,' said Damien Timmer, the executive producer for Granada Productions. The mystery man remains enclosed by the picture frame in the first film, The Body in the Library, but it is understood that he comes fleetingly to life in a later episode. Only the most careful of viewers will recognise the face as that of Marc Warren, an actor whose name on a cast list invariably spells trouble, as fellow characters in Hustle and State of Play can attest.

When Marple is introduced to the audience, resting in an arm chair of her home in the quiet English village of St Mary Mead, she is gazing fondly upon a sepia-tinted photograph of a uniformed man. The first of four new films, to be screened in December and starring Geraldine McEwan as the amateur sleuth, permits only the mildest hint of her new inner depth.

Body in the library geraldine mcewan