Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Bill Nighy, Luke Treadaway, Anthony Boyle, Anna Chancellor, Morven Christie, Crystal Clarke, Alice Eve, Matthew Goode, Ella Purnell, Eleanor Tomlinson, Brian McCardie, Luke Murray, Hayden Robertson, Catriona McNicoll, Abigail Conteh, Rhys Lambert, Frances Grey.
In the world of Agatha Christie nobody is innocent, all have a dark secret they wish to keep hidden from view and it is in the capturing of the human capacity for deceit that makes Ms. Christie, almost 50 years after her death, one author from the 20th Century who makes the reader understand with absolute certainty that death is but a companion in the shadow of our hearts when it comes to the bitterness, jealousy and greed we allow to dwell in our souls.
For the modern viewer of such old tales, it is expected that the story has to change, to be seen and adapted to disregard the formula, to put in place the mechanism of surprise in which to capture the imagination of those willing to play the role of the armchair detective. The same old story leaves little to the progressive nature of literature, and almost anyone can tell the recite the same words, the unchanged ending, it is up to the adapter to challenge the armchair detective into believing that outcomes can change.
The writer of Ordeal By Innocence, Sarah Phelps, has challenged with a cool hand, and a half raised eyebrow etched upon the scribe’s face, to bring the world of the Queen of Crime fiction up to date and in a back story of changing faces that would not be out of keeping in the works of Agatha Christie herself, the agility of the makers of the three part serial to quickly adapt their own story due to outside influences, is to be congratulated as much as it is to laud Ms. Phelps.
Ordeal By Innocence touches the nerve of betrayal not especially touched upon by Ms. Christie, that of the despotic matriarch with good intentions having ruled the roost over every aspect of her charge’s lives and one that gives a chilling thought in the days of the threat of Nuclear War that hung over daily lives in the shadow and endings of World War Two.
It is also one, with the adapter’s eye firmly fixed on the surprise detail, which implies that the big reveal is only the start of the fall out the family is to endure once the murderer is finally exposed.
With tremendous performances by Anthony Boyle, Bill Nighy, Luke Treadaway and Morven Christie, Ordeal By Innocence is an intriguing and consummate adaptation of one of the great works in Ms. Christie’s latter career, a tale of death wielded and deceit embraced; Agatha Christie, and Sarah Phelps at their very best.
Ian D. Hall