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wiseheartOn a slightly less whiny note, I've been watching TV-versions of the Miss Marple stories lately. And it has been fun, in more than one note.
My absolute favourite is the version starring Joan Hickson, of course - that woman is marevellous, and so is Nether Wallop, the village dubbing as St Mary Mead. And I like all the recurring characters, especially Inspector Slack who's so delightfully disgusting in his pig-headedness.
I must ruefully admit that I just can't stand Geraldine McEwan, although most people seem to like her. To me, she appears way too artificial and somehow false. But we're different people with different tastes, I guess.
I liked Julia McKenzie slightly better, she was genuinely likeable, but visually didn't match my image of Miss Marple.
But the most fun was watching actors I know from vastly different series acting in Miss Marple.
- Peter Davison (5th Doctor) and Rupert Graves (DI Lestrade from Sherlock BBC) played the same character - namely Lawrence Fortescue from "A Pocketful of Rye" - in two different versions.
- Mark Gatiss was hilarious as the neurotic, repressed junior priest in "The Murder at the Vicarage" So very different from the nonchalant, quietly sinister Mycroft Holmes. Or from Professor Lazarus in Dr. Who.
- And while Benedict Cumberbatch does play a retired police officer in "Murder is Easy", he couldn't be more different from Sherlock if he tried.
- I'm looking forward to watching "Ordeal by Innocence" next, which will have Jane Seymour, Burn Gorman (Owen Harper from Torchwood), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Tish Jones from Dr Who), Julian Rhind-Tutt (evil sorcerer from Merlin) and Richard Armitage.
It's also interesting to see which elements did the different versions keep from a particular book, what was deleted and what was added for the sake of "drama" - the latter rarely improves the story, I'm afraid.
We owe all Miss Marple books - with the exception of "The Thirteen Problems" that was apparently never translated - in Hungarian. Yesterday I went off in the midday heat and bought the five I could get in English original. I'm expecting fun times ahead of me.
My absolute favourite is the version starring Joan Hickson, of course - that woman is marevellous, and so is Nether Wallop, the village dubbing as St Mary Mead. And I like all the recurring characters, especially Inspector Slack who's so delightfully disgusting in his pig-headedness.
I must ruefully admit that I just can't stand Geraldine McEwan, although most people seem to like her. To me, she appears way too artificial and somehow false. But we're different people with different tastes, I guess.
I liked Julia McKenzie slightly better, she was genuinely likeable, but visually didn't match my image of Miss Marple.
But the most fun was watching actors I know from vastly different series acting in Miss Marple.
- Peter Davison (5th Doctor) and Rupert Graves (DI Lestrade from Sherlock BBC) played the same character - namely Lawrence Fortescue from "A Pocketful of Rye" - in two different versions.
- Mark Gatiss was hilarious as the neurotic, repressed junior priest in "The Murder at the Vicarage" So very different from the nonchalant, quietly sinister Mycroft Holmes. Or from Professor Lazarus in Dr. Who.
- And while Benedict Cumberbatch does play a retired police officer in "Murder is Easy", he couldn't be more different from Sherlock if he tried.
- I'm looking forward to watching "Ordeal by Innocence" next, which will have Jane Seymour, Burn Gorman (Owen Harper from Torchwood), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Tish Jones from Dr Who), Julian Rhind-Tutt (evil sorcerer from Merlin) and Richard Armitage.
It's also interesting to see which elements did the different versions keep from a particular book, what was deleted and what was added for the sake of "drama" - the latter rarely improves the story, I'm afraid.
We owe all Miss Marple books - with the exception of "The Thirteen Problems" that was apparently never translated - in Hungarian. Yesterday I went off in the midday heat and bought the five I could get in English original. I'm expecting fun times ahead of me.
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Date: 2013-08-02 05:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-02 07:09 am (UTC)