The Murder Room

Dame P.D. James is one of the most respected and revered mystery writers of our times. At ripe age of89 she still writes marvelous books. I saw the other TV adaptations of her novels made on BBC, and they were done with great flair and creativity. Unfortunately, this TV movie wasn't done with the same flawless style as the previous installments. The script was very disjointed and hard to decipher. The editing was jerky and illogical. All in all a puzzling experience. Luckily, the saving grace was as usual a great cast of brilliant British actors. Martin Shaw is a good actor, but like most of the other fans I prefer Roy Marsden.

Old P D James keeps the books coming and in no time they are on TV. This is a gripping story and is as good as her others.

It's all about a privately run museum, which has a room about murders of the past. People start getting bumped off in ways which resemble some of the earlier crimes.

It's well acted, but I found it hard to accept Martin Shaw in the lead role as Dalgleish. He seemed physically wrong for it -- too much of an ox for the poet Dalgleish. His two assistants also appeared to be lightweight and rather too young to be inspectors. They had to do mundane work that I would have thought would be done by lower ranks.

The subplot about Dalgleish's attempt to woo a girlfriend is a bit of a distraction and not well integrated into the rest of the story.

"The Murder Room," from a novel by P.D. James, is an excellent whodunit starring Martin Shaw as Adam Dalgliesh, and that's the problem right there. Though a fine actor, he just isn't Dalgliesh for me. I remember the old series starring Roy Marsden as being more exciting.

The story concerns a lease about to expire on a family museum, and there is one holdout, Neville Dupayne, who does not want to re-sign. The museum features a Murder Room, which displays information on notorious murders that took place between World War I and World War II. Neville, a doctor, thinks the money could be put to medical use.

When Neville dies in what appears to be a copycat murder of a display in the Murder Room, Commander Dalgleish is brought in. He has a lot of suspects to choose from -- the victim's brother and sister, museum employees who stood to lose their jobs, his secretary who is also his ex-mistress, and others. The solution, however, won't be found by investigating only the present day.

Though a good mystery and well-done, it was too long, in part because a subplot dealt with Dalgleish's love life, which I, for one, couldn't have cared less about. I didn't even understand why this woman was so interested in him, as the character was emotionally very uptight and a workaholic.

I found Dalgleish's relationship with his associates unpleasant, and both of them uninteresting.

I can only ask, where's Roy Marsden when you need him. He's only four years older than Shaw.

40 minutes in....all characters present but not one of them likeable. all "self obsessed" with themselves and with little concern for anything else but "me". Dalgleish is completely uninteresting and this needed a Roy Marsden without which, simply find something else to do

As always, P D James has written a very good and intriguing story. The adaptation is faithful to the book: nothing much is added or taken out. However maybe the explanation of the murderer's motives was glossed over a little.

I actually prefer Martin Shaw rather than Roy Marsden as Adam Dalgliesh. Martin Shaw's portrayal is arguably less faithful to the character as P D James writes it, but portrays him as a more human, likable character. I always found Roy Marsden's portrayal (and his description in P D James's books) to be stern, humourless, aloof, distant and with no likable qualities or little human failings that I could identify with.

I liked the subplot about his girlfriend. It showed his vulnerability and his awkwardness with women; the letter that he wrote to her at the end (I won't spoil it by mentioning the subject) was very moving.

I agree that characters of Dalgliesh's two inspectors weren't really developed properly (they aren't in the book either). One of the slight failings of the Dalgliesh books and TV series are that the relationship between Dalgliesh and his sidekicks isn't strong enough that they can confide in each other, in the way that Morse and Lewis or Wexford and Burden do. The acid test of a "good" TV detective, aside from their deductive qualities, is whether you like them as a person and could imagine yourself discussing a case with them over a pint. With Morse, Frost or Wexford, this is easy to imagine; with Dalgliesh, especially as portrayed by Roy Marsden, I suspect that the conversation would be a bit tense and there would be lots of long silences! At least it is easier to imagine having a drink and a chat with Martin Shaw's version of Dalgliesh.