‘Murder Is Easy’ BBC1 Review
Upsetting the bigots and racists again?
I think if memory serves me right there was not a BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie for the Christmas holidays last year. It is something that was a regular occurrence and that makes the television schedule over the festive period just a tad more classy. Thankfully there is an adaptation this year over two successive evenings. The first part was yesterday with the second — yes well done — tonight. But if you cannot wait — as I could not — both parts are already on the BBC iplayer.
There has already been some controversy over the change to the colour of the main character and his antecedents. In the original book, Luke Fitzwilliam is a colonial policeman who returns to England just before the Second World War. In the new BBC adaptation, he is a Nigerian taking up a position in the Colonial Office in Whitehall in the post-war era.
He does meet with a few odd looks from some of the occupants of the small village and some bigoted comments from the very dodgy new Lord of the Manor who bought his title rather than being born into it. But generally, he has more funny looks from people as he is an outsider, not because of his colour. This I found most odd and rather downplaying the “No Irish No Blacks No Dogs” mentality that was common in the post-war era of England from all sections of…
