Marple is Geraldine McEwan here, and she is called in to solve a mystery by Hugh Hornbeam (Aidan McArdle). He is helping Gwenda Halliday (Sophia Myles) who just came from India, to settle in the new house she personally chose. She's engaged to an older man still in India, but it's clear that Hugh is in love with her. Anyway, she's having nightmares and flashes of a dead woman, strangled, in that same house, and the name Helen that she doesn't remember ever knowing. She was so little back then that she doesn't even remember ever being to England.
So, Hugh calls for Miss Marple to come and help them solve this mystery.
They find Gwenda had indeed lived in that same house when she was a baby, and Helen was the name of the woman engaged to her father. They meet her uncle, Dr James Kennedy (Phil Davis-he was the murderer in the first Sherlock episode) who says that his sister Claire died in India of a car accident, that Helen disappeared the night before the wedding, sending only a postcard, and that Kelvin Halliday committed suicide because she had left him (now, how could nobody doubt that? He had a little girl to think of!!! and had also survived his first wife's death, apparently, so it's not so likely that he would kill himself because a girl had left him!). Helen was part of a theatre group, and they are all suspects now, along with an old friend of Helen: Walter Fane (Peter Serafinowicz) who has an overprotective and jealous mother (Geraldine Chaplin, whose first line here is: 'she was a nymphomaniac' speaking of Helen, who she thought wanted to take Walter away from her, before Kelvin arrived, that is). I'm very glad to say that there is Una Stubbs in this episode, as Mrs Pagett, a woman that worked in that house when Gwenda was a baby, and is hired again now - her fancy for the refrigerator is lovely :-) it could have been silly with another actress, but with her is just quite lovely :-)
The other performers were: Dickie (Paul McGann, didn't recognize him but now I see why I liked him) and his wife Janet who got pregnant, only the father of the child was Walter, but Dickie thought it was fellow performer Jackie and they had a fight.
Evie Ballantine (Sarah Parish) was really good but didn't get the respect she deserved from the rest of the crew. Dickie thought she wasn't good enough to have a solo part (she's now the only star of them all) and Jackie (Martin Kemp) who she liked very much, treated her badly. The night Helen disappeared Evie had tried to commit suicide and Jackie saved her. The end of the mystery is: Claire faked her own death in India because she was a thief and wanted to escape the police; Helen was Claire trying to start a new life with her husband and daughter under a false name; Dr Kennedy was obsessively in love with his sister, but when she refused his avances he killed her, and also killed Kelvin. The episode ends with a smile, showing Jackie driving away with Evie, and Dickie and Janet playing cards with Walter and his son George (who worked for him, so in a way he had always been close to him), and Miss Marple giving an advice to Hugh, who runs to Gwenda and proposes to her. We don't hear any word, but we see him on one knee, then she takes his hand and they walk on together, so I think no words are necessary here. Nice. I quite liked it. Good actors :-)
ITA addio miss marple (?)
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento