Murder Is Easy

Agatha Christie's 1939 story has been updated to the Eighties and it's hero/protagonist made an American allowing for the casting of Bill Bixby as Luke Williams, mathematical genius and computer programmer. He takes a fateful ride on a British commuter train and meets up with Helen Hayes who has an important errand to run.

Helen's a talkative old biddy who is worried that there have been a number of strange deaths in her small village recently and she fears that village constable Freddie Jones isn't quite up to a homicide investigation. She's confides in Bixby and then gets run down by a hit and run driver as she leaves the train.

Bixby's mathematical mind can't take in the random probabilities of all this coincidence and it intrigues him. He goes back to Hayes's village and turns detective, annoying village constable Jones, but finding romance with Lesley Anne Down and a host of suspects and a couple more deaths before the mystery is solved.

Among other inhabitants at the village is the local librarian Olivia DeHavilland and Timothy West who owns several newspapers. It's a pity that the story called for Helen Hayes to be killed off immediately so there could be no scenes with DeHavilland and Hayes.

As this story was written in 1939 I suspect that Agatha Christie had Lord Beaverbrook in mind for Timothy West's character. Audiences in 1982, especially American ones couldn't possibly appreciate the satire that Christie was employing with West as the tyrannical ego-maniacal newspaper publisher. Still I suspect citizens of the United Kingdom of the older generations knew quite well who West's character was modeled on.

I don't think the updating especially hurt the story however. The cast does very well by their roles and it's an intriguing film and idea that Helen Hayes voices.

Murder is Easy (based on the novel Murder is Easy aka Easy to Kill) differs from the Agatha Christie novel in that the amateur sleuth Luke Fitzwilliams is changed to American Luke Williams for American TV-Movie reasons. Aptly so, that an American actor (Bill Bixby) could assume the role. Having said that, it is fitting to say that Murder is Easy is a wonderful adaptation for television. Old-time greats Olivia De Havilland and Helen Hayes have some nice spots as British spinsters Honorea Waynflete and Lavinia Fullerton. Other Brit stalwarts Timothy West, Shane Briant, Lee Lawson, and the stunningly beautiful Lesley-Anne Down round out the great cast. Also in an early role was Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean) as Mr. Ellsworthy. Bill Bixby is adequate, but Olivia De Havilland is very engaging in one of her latter day roles as Miss Waynflete, as is the great Helen Hayes as Miss Fullerton.

Wonderful English countryside scenery, a great cast and an engaging story are more than enough reasons to view this movie over and over again.

American adaptations of Agatha Christie (especially for television) tend to be on the low end of the scale. It's principally the writing, secondarily the directing – i.e. the writers and directors mold the Christie work into something they *think* American audiences want instead of giving us what we actually *do* want – which, when it comes to English murder mysteries, is the same thing the English want.

So, I was greatly taken by surprise so see that *this* adaptation of *Murder is Easy* was NOT bad. It is not grade 'A' quality by a long shot; but it is definitely a high 'B' grade. And it is certainly more faithful to the original than the 2008 adaptation (which has a lot of *very* bizarre flights of fancy that do NOT make for a better story; just a bizarre one).

In this version, Luke is not a retired policeman from India but a computer expert from America; but the age difference is the same (or at least Bixby was 20 years older than Down, which is the age difference in the novel). Lavinia Pinkerton has become Lavinia Fullerton for some reason, but she's killed the same way under either surname. Gordon Ragg, Lord Whitfield (no known relation to June) has become Lord Easterfield (in full credit, Lord Gordon Easterfield; but Easterfield would be his lordship, not his surname - so he might still be a Ragg, at least by birth). Honoria Waynflete, Rose Humbleby, and the rest (so far as I can tell) are all the same.

The plot develops steadily and cleanly, as the suspense slowly builds. As in the novel, Luke believes the killer is a certain individual – which, of course, is a classic signal to reader and viewer that it must be someone else; but who? Ah, therein lies the mystery – and when the identity of the killer is finally revealed, it *is* a surprise (unless, of course, you have already read the book) because it is somebody whom nobody would suspect.

And as long as nobody suspects you ... Murder is Easy.

Side Note for Radio Fans: The best adaptation of this novel to date (November 2016) is one that was done a few years ago for BBC Radio 4 by Joy Wilkinson. It stars Patrick Baladi (New Tricks, Poirot), Lydia Leonard (The 39 Steps - 2008 version), Michael Cochrane (Downton Abbey), Marcia Warren (Agatha Raisin, Dangerfield), and a lot of other very good British actors that most Americans will not have heard of.

Bill Bixby doesn't have his green alter-ego to help him this time, only his sleuthing abilities. You wouldn't like him when he's snooping around. In this TV movie Adapted from Dame Agatha Christie book, Bixby stars as a MIT stats professor who befriends an old lady on a train who confides in him that she's off to Scotland yard to report on a murderer. She is later killed in a hit and run accident. The MIT professor decides to investigate...

Fairly enjoyable mystery with good performances from Lesley Anne down and Bill Bixby, though it can focus a little too much on the romance between them, however it passes the time adequately with a good ending.

Luke Williams encounters and strikes up a conversation with an elderly lady on a train, she explains that her village is beset by accidental tragedy, and as soon as she departs the station, she is killed in another......accident.

I have to say Murder is Easy is one of my all time favourite Agatha Christie books, I love the characters, I love the witchcraft element, I also love the concept of murder being easy, it is undoubtedly one of Christie's cleverest themes.

I actually like this adaptation, it's one that's grown on me over the years, early on I didn't really care for the modern setting, or the probability theme, but in recent times, I've come to accept them.

I'm surprised by just how much of the book is actually present here, of course there are lots of differences, but the core of the story is very much here, most or the deaths are covered, and they didn't veer too far off the grizzly ends that Christie originally wrote.

The script is a little clunky at times, some of Luke's dialogue doesn't work, but the whole thing is elevated by a wonderful cast, the cast list makes for impressive reading, and fair play the acting is terrific, Bill Bixby, Lesley-Anne Down, Freddie Jones all spot on, and of course there's real Star quality in the form of Olivia del Havilland.

It deserves a remake, it deserves a quality remake, I know one is coming from The BBC/Britbox, I'm intrigued to see what they do with it.

Overall, it's a thumbs up.

7/10.