User Reviews

This is definitely a rarity in ITV1's Marple series - it appears to have been adapted by someone who has not only read the novel, but also understood it.

There were minor changes made to the story, but they were nowhere near the wholesale destruction of plot and character visited upon other entries in the series, notably Sleeping Murder (rendered thoroughly nonsensical by the addition of the end of the pier show).

Geraldine McEwan was as good as ever, and the cast for this one seemed to be treating it relatively seriously, with the exception of Ken Russell, whose turn as the vicar proved that he's even worse as an actor than he is as a director.

The production suffered from the series' standard malaise of treating the characters as if they were all cardboard stereotypes, thus making it difficult for the audience to care for them, but most of the time the cast managed to rise above this and seem reasonably believable. If ITV1 can produce more of this standard, then a third series could be watchable - particularly if they adapt stories which actually feature Miss Marple, as opposed to what we've got coming in the next couple of weeks...

Jerry Burton is badly injured after a motorcycle accident. To aid his convalescence he and his sister spend some time in the small English village of Lymstock. Unfortunately for them they have walked into a rather unpleasant situation. Someone in the village is writing hate mail to local inhabitants, calling them names and accusing them of all manner of things. It appears this has already lead to one local, a retired Army Colonel, killing themselves. Another, Mona Symmington, also dies, leaving a suicide note. The police are now taking the case seriously, with Inspector Graves on the case. Miss Marple is also on the scene, but it is Jerry Burton who is doing most of the investigating. For more personal purposes, he has his eye on the beautiful nanny to the Symmington's children, Elsie Holland. Mr Symmington's step-daughter, Megan Hunter, is another distraction.

Interesting mystery with some very interesting and engaging sub- plots. The Jerry Burton-Elsie Holland-Megan Hunter romantic angle was quite interesting and played out nicely in the end.

If anything, this episode shows the difference between the Poirot series and the Miss Marple series. In the Poirot series, Poirot was undeniably the central character. With his eccentricities he was colourful and larger-than-life. He was in almost every scene in that series.

In the Miss Marple series, she tends to not be the central character. Yes, she ultimately always solves the case but her character is too bland to carry an episode from start to finish. So we have another, more interesting, character be the central character. In this case it is Jerry Burton (played by James D'Arcy).

D'Arcy does a fine job as Burton. Cast also includes Harry Enfield. Kelly Brook plays Elsie Holland, and it's always good to see her (!). She has some good competition, on screen and in the looks stakes, from Talulah Riley, as Megan Hunter.

It took me a couple of episodes to realize, but there's something else very remarkable about ITV's "Agatha Christie's Marple"... This series is chock-full of multi-talented and stunningly beautiful actresses! Amanda Holden in episode two, and Sophie Myles in episode four, left big and positive impressions on me, but this particular entry features no less than FIVE breathtaking strong women! Kelly Brook, Talulah Riley, Ellen Capron, Emilia Fox and Jessica Hynes (although the latter is made deliberately unattractive) ... All five ladies contributed a lot to me enjoying this splendid adaptation of one of Mrs. Christie's most underrated but extremely clever whodunits.

Jane Marple - as usual, the right spinster in the right place - is visiting her friend in Lymstock, but there are nasty events taking place in the sleepy little village. Someone anonymous is sending around foul letters to everyone in town, spreading indecent rumors and smutty accusations. The letters even already led towards a few suicides, or were they murders after all? Together with another new arrival, a soldier recovering from self-inflicted motorcycle accident, Miss Marple tries to reveal the identity of the devious letter-sender, but there are many suspects with many motives; - also as usual.

"The Moving Finger" is definitely one of my favorite episodes of the show. For the beautiful actresses, of course, but also because the script is a lot more "inviting" to partake in the search for the culprit.

I thought BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS in this new Miss Marple series was good, but THE MOVING FINGER has presented a lineup of many pleasing and not-so-pleasing eccentrics and British grotesqueries. The famed director Ken Russell portrays a shambling vicar, the Rev. Calthrop, like a fugitive from one of his deliriously enjoyable films; his wife, Maud is portrayed by Frances de la Tour, the horsey and lugubrious actress who portrayed the gigantess Madame Olympe Maxime in HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE; Sean Pertwee, son of the late and great Jon Pertwee plays a nervous, mousy Dr. Griffith who is seduced by the hoydenish and blazing red-headed lorelei, Joanna Burton, played by Emilia Fox; the waspish and flagrantly gay Cardew Pye has an unexpected soft centre, courtesy of John Sessions; James D'Arcy plays Jerry Burton as a seemingly unsympathetic character who gradually begins to come out of his self-imposed protective shell as the story progresses. Geraldine McEwan seems to have put her stamp on the Jane Marple character by presenting her as somewhere between the indomitable Dame Margaret Rutherford's swashbuckling and sputtering Miss Marple and the icily restrained and too-perfectly-emotionless Joan Hickson's Miss Marple, which is generally seen as the portrayal closest to Dame Agatha Christie's original intent for the character. Mugging, smiling, very physically active, McEwan gives her Miss Marple a distinctive flair that may be an acquired taste, like rutabagas, to some of you viewers out there. The rest of the cast is more than adequate, and director Tom Shankland does an OK job pulling all the story threads together.

Having survived a motorcycle accident/suicide attempt with only two broken legs, Jerry Burton comes to the quiet village of Lymstock to recuperate in peace. However being introduced around the village Jerry and his sister Joanna quickly get to hear everyone's dirty secrets and benefit from the gossiping that comes with any afternoon tea. However this is just the superficial stuff because underneath most of the village is receiving poison pen letters. When Mrs Symmington, one of the village's residents, commits suicide as a result of one such letter, things become more serious and accusations are flying between everyone. Luckily the houseguest at the vicarage is none other than the unassuming Miss Marple (visiting following a suicide of an old acquaintance), who may be able to help cast some light on the situation.

Opening a backdrop that makes no attempt at reality, then flashing up a gaudy title cad followed by a sequence that is washed out apart from blood red colours a la Sin City I knew that this film was not going to have much in common with the old BBC Miss Marple series than I know. This was my first shot at the new ITV version of Miss Marple (or "Marple" as they have called it in a fit of modernism) and I wasn't sure quite what to expect once the first few minutes had thrown me off my stride. The mood did settle down after that but the tone was still very much of a lively modern mystery rather than the drier and more repressed drama from the BBC. I'm not sure this is an entirely welcome thing but it did at least make it more suitable for Sunday night viewing.

The plot follows Jerry as much as it does Miss Marple and it perhaps says more about my feelings towards McEwan than anything else but I felt this was quite a good thing. It also allows us (the audience) to encounter the clues at the same time as Jerry and not have to have them all put together there and then. This device worked reasonably well although I didn't think the mystery was developed that well. The nature of the telling is good though as it is entertaining, bright and lively. The direction and production helps because rather than being dry, everything is colourful and full, meanwhile the visual style is more adventurous than the earlier series would have suggested possible.

The cast continues this "big and bold" theme by basically having loads of famous names in it – from main characters right down to lesser roles. Personally I'm not sure about McEwan as Miss Marple; she doesn't suit the role and she doesn't convince me that she is that smart or cunning in the way Hickson did, although she is still good value. D'Arcy is fairly good as the main leading actor, he is quite interesting and doesn't push to steal the film from anyone else. The support cast are heaving at the sides and demonstrates such eclectic casting that I couldn't help but be taken in. The material seems to have been evenly spread which means no one person stands out that much. Allen is fun in a simple "bumbling detective" style role, while Enfield, Brook, Fox, Stubbs, Sessions, Russell, de la Tour and others easily fill out the film with plenty of good turns.

A strangely modern Marple then but quite enjoyable at that. The narrative is solid enough and produces a reasonably good mystery to work with but it is the cast and the generally lively production that sticks in the memory and makes this better than it should have been. I struggled with McEwan because Marple has always been a bit drier in my mind but I must admit that this glossy production was hard to dislike for what it did.

This was a bit better than most of the ITV Marples so far. The story was coherent and the village setting at Chilham in Kent was charming. James D'Arcy and Emilia Fox were good. They seemed to take their parts seriously - a thing sadly not to be taken for granted in this series.

As usual, however, the producers had to try to muck all it up with weird features and freakish performances.

The 'aren't we clever by being retro' back projection does not come off - it is just naff.

Harry Enfield's performance is a bit like his old stiff-upper-lip-in-old-British-films caricatures - unfortunately. Keith Allen's character is a feeble joke, and Ken Russell is off the scale of pointless nuttiness - and dressed in an outfit left over from some old Victorian melodrama.

Yet again, in another misguided feature of this series, the Mr Pye character isn't allowed just to seem precious and affected, but has to make an explicit speech on gay rights. Yes, really, in an Agatha Christie story set in the early 1950s -- hard as it may be to believe for those who haven't seen it.

On a general note: I've noticed in these films that there tends to be a mix of actors who are taking the proceedings seriously (usually lesser names) and others (well-known names) who just seem to be having a cheap laugh or slumming to make a quick few quid.

The biggest flaw of the series is its lack of respect for Agatha Christie. The makers appear to look down on her stories as low-grade pap that can be used or abused at their whim. Christie and Marple come in handy as famous names to market the films, and the books are a quarry for bits of material that can be bent to fit their own agenda.

Sad, really.

A pretty faithful adaptation with only minor scale changes. The Moving Finger is one of my favourite Christie novels, there is no much spite in it, it's quite a nasty story, that spite is brilliantly realised here.

Once again idyllic village life is shown, bright skies, everyone smiling, beautiful country life, but underneath the veneers are the poison pen letters, and murder.

Christie wrote her characters as big and bold, they really are that here.

As usual it looks rather wonderful, the settings are glorious. The fashions and clothes are spot on, Emilia Fox gets to wear some stunning outfits, you can see she enjoyed the production. Some really smart and slick dialogue, some of the chat is brilliant. The filming too is really slick, it's very interesting to watch. I also like how James D'Arcy part narrates it. The music is always appropriate it builds the tension.

Some interesting casting, we'll start with the unusual choices, Ken Russell, a rather surprising choice to play a man of the cloth, I would have said a better choice could have been made. Kelly Brook, shows that she can act, that she's not just there to look heavenly (which of course she does!)

As for the more traditional casting, I think the episode is stolen by Harry Enfield, known more as a man of comedy I thought he was excellent. I loved Emilia Fox, Frances de la Tour and of course Geraldine too, she's a brilliant Jane Marple.

I loved it, 10/10.

I'm new to this Australian series of Miss Marple mysteries, and it's been years since I read any Miss Marple.

The last McEwan Marple I saw, I found her too "knowing" as Marple. Marple's crime-solving chops come from years of observation in her village of St. Mary Mead. She's not sophisticated, and she's not "sharp" as a police detective would be. She's homespun. This time around, with the emphasis off of Marple and onto war veteran Jerry Burton who is trying to solve the mystery of the poison pen letters, we have a closer version of Christie's Miss Marple.

This particular story stayed faithful to the book, and the production values are quite opulent. Ken Russell, who directed, gives an outrageous performance as the vicar, and there is nice work from James D'Arcy, Emilia Fox as his sister, Kelly Brook as a nanny to whom Jerry is attracted, and Talulah Riley as Megan. Great to see Imogen Stubbs, whom I enjoyed so much in "Anna Lee."

As far as this series has gone, I liked "Murder is Announced", "Murder at the Vicarage" and in some ways "4.50 From Paddington" but was disappointed in "Sleeping Murder", "Nemesis", "Body in the Library" and especially "Sittaford Mystery". While not 100% perfect, "Moving Finger" is by far one of the better ITV Marple adaptations. While taking a few minor liberties, it does respect the book somewhat, and manages to be absorbing in terms of plot and stylish in terms of production values, as they were really delightful here. The acting is very, very good, Harry Enfield overdoes it just a tad as Symmington and I didn't care for Ken Russell very much as the vicar, but Frances DeLa Tour, Talullah Riley, Imogen Stubbs, Keith Allen and John Sessions all turn in solid work. Geraldine McEwan does give one of her better performances as Miss Marple, and as Joanna and Jerry Emilia Fox and James D'Arcy are appealing enough. The direction was decent and the pace is nice and skippy, but if I had any other complaints other than the occasional overacting of one or two members of the cast, the writers could have developed the script a tad. Other than that, this is a surprisingly good adaptation. 8/10 Bethany Cox

There is many a war hero who has returned home asking the question...Why did I survive?...then suffering bouts of guilt, booze and depression, and thoughts of suicide. Such, presumably, is Jerry Burton's state of mind as he rides his motorcycle into a tree, escaping death, but incurring broken legs. (Or has he had a failed love affair? The script doesn't make the reason quite clear.) Recovering from the "accident", he completes his convalescence helped by his sister Joanne in the lovely idyllic village of Lymstock. Thus is an interesting deviation from the novel's flying accident theme. And for once in this series, given Agatha Christie's inclinations towards the use of psychology in her story-lines, I suspect the change might just have had her approval. It has no real bearing on the main plot of course, but gives a little more bite to Jerry's romance in it.

Unlike most of the episodes of the series "Marple", this adaptation of "The Moving Finger" stays, by and large, faithful to the original mystery, and I for one (after vilifying other episodes), must reluctantly confess that I rather enjoyed it, although more thought could have been given to the casting.

I was reared in an English village at the time that this story is supposed to take place. Never once did I see a vicar such as portrayed here by Ken Russell, either High Church or otherwise, wandering around dressed as if he'd just come from a "Barchester Chronicles" film set, and although Christie described his wife as "not at all like a vicar's wife", Francis de la Tour's interpretation also jars with the setting.

One of the main reasons that "whodunnits" are so popular, is that readers enjoy following the clues to reach the identity of the culprit before the "resident" sleuth. This is only possible if the clues are presented. The pivotal clue of Symmington's unfortunate maid is virtually hidden. (I know this story so well, and even I nearly missed it.) Perhaps I'm being a little picky, because as far as the series goes, this episode, and "A Murder is Announced", are the only two I've seen that wouldn't have poor Agatha spinning in her grave. However I still prefer the Joan Hickson version of this story, and that earlier series as a whole. I just cannot see Geraldine McEwan's somewhat brusque Jane Marple, as the one that the author envisaged. I'm sure Joan Hickson's more unobtrusive Jane Marple was. But if the mantle of the elderly sleuth must be borne, I suppose that Geraldine is as good a choice as could be made.

Has the message really got through to the scriptwriters at last, or is it that they've been advised from above to actually read the novels before adapting them? And/or deciding perhaps that Dame Agatha'a plots are fine just as she wrote them. One would hope this trend continues, but I still have my doubts about forthcoming productions. Time will tell.

After being "ripped off" on "SLEEPING MURDER" where the storyline was completely different than the book, I made a firm resolution to read the book FIRST and watch the movie later. I absolutely loved this great adaptation. The biggest difference was an added suicide and changing Mrs. Holland's personality a bit. And Jerry Burton was made a drunken sex maniac. Other than that this movie was a beautiful adaptation of the original. I absolutely recommend this movie for anyone, regardless whether you read the book or not. This is truly one of the best adaptations of the series. Now, I have to watch "BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS" and "THE SITTAFORD MYSTERY". Then I will form a full impression of this series.

This was a terrific movie. I watched it on PBS, and I had to wait a week for the last hour. It is the only time in my life where I've bitten my nails all week about a two parter episode to a show. It had the perfect blend of mystery, while also giving you a feeling that you were learning something about the characters.

The acting was superb, and I felt as if the story really was unfolding right before my eyes. They cast really well, from the gossipy Mrs. Symmington, to Talulah Riley as Megan, and then of course, Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple herself. She will always be my favorite Miss Marple, and there have been several.

The best part of The Moving Finger, is that the ending was so completely unexpected. My hats off to Miss Marple.

The cast are stellar- and completely wonderful. I have never seen a better version than this- and I have been watching crime drama since the 60s. Joan Hickson is still my ultimate Miss Marple- but the entire cast of this episode really make it shine.

Ach, I'm a big fan of Geraldine McEwan but this is a right old heap of baloney.

It seems like ITV had done their focus groups and decided that the perfect anodyne formula for elderly Daily Mail readers was the bones of a Christie story, some nice English rural settings and a sprinkling of well-known faces hoping to appeal to all the important demographic groups. If you've got all that, no need to bother with any depth or drama.

So we get Ken Russell as a batty old vicar, Frances de la Tour wondering what on earth she let herself in for, Harry Enfield as a creepy doctor and John Sessions, well just being gay. They all do a good turn in their own way, but it does seem like they just wanted to be in an Agatha Christie story, unless they actually needed the money.

Most unsettling of all was the drippy 'central' character, who looked exactly like a young Alan Hansen recovering from a knee injury. I was just expecting him to turn to camera any moment and say 'ye win nothing with celebrity cameos'.

I love the Christie mystery THE MOVING FINGER. The Joan Hickson version is close to perfect. This story is so good even "Marple" couldn't mess it up.

Did they take liberties? Of course. Being on "Marple" implies liberties. But they didn't really alter the general story. Christie worked hard to get her stories right and I fume when they break a story's back.

This version has some excellent performances (or funny, or both) by the likes of Imogen Stubbs and John Sessions. Say what you like, "Marple" drew genuine talent. Oh, and the ethereal Kelly Brook, who is hilarious just by showing up. With the right makeup, lighting and camera work she's too lovely to be believed.

The "Marple" people have come under fire for some of their more ridiculous decisions (from me, especially). But when they're good I take my hat off to them. They did well here, and with "Murder at the Vicarage," "A Murder is Announced," and even their shredded but fun "The Sittaford Mystery."

"The Miving Finger" is far from a perfect adaptation of the novel, but why quibble? It's a fun ride and that's why we go to amusement parks.

I've recently discovered Miss Marple and definitely it's worth watching. The Poison pen storyline is akin to online hate messages which thanks to the anonymity fo the internet (for the most part) has flourished in ways that Miss Marple could never have imagined.

Imogen Stubbs guest stars, along with legendary actor Ken Russell.