Since it has been decades since I read 4:50 from Paddington, I didn’t notice that the railway clerk was rude and officious instead of being Miss Marple’s helpful great-nephew. Thus, Lucy arriving at Rutherford Hall and offering her services to the hard-up Crackenthorpe family and having them eagerly say yes was easy to accept. A few minutes were spent showing how incredibly well-connected Lucy is: she was Noël Coward’s temporary housekeeper and he was pathetically grateful to have her services. That was not in the text, but it worked in the film. Mysteriously, 94 minutes did allow enough time for Miss Marple to interrupt Noël Coward’s song routine with Lucy Eyelesbarrow in the middle of a cocktail party to ask for her assistance in locating a body. They also played fast and loose with the novel.Ĭharacters vanish, not surprising since a 94-minute movie doesn’t have a lot of time for quaint natives, faithful servants, and local color. They play fast and loose with the timeline. Sadly, as I mentioned earlier, ITV doesn’t feel the need to follow Agatha’s own order of short stories and novels. We’ve organized enough now to watch the productions in order of original air date (December of 2004 here). So here we are with the third ITV production of Agatha Christie’s Marple. Agatha doesn’t give an explanation for Miss Marple’s leap of deduction either. This is one case where adapting the novel would have been an improvement. The complete lack of a reason killed the movie for me.

I would have given this adaptation a higher rating except for the criminal lack of subtitles and the fact that I could not figure out how Miss Marple made that deductive leap to unearth the murderer in the last fifteen minutes. I didn’t remember the novel well, so I wasn’t looking for mistakes or adaptation errors.

Quality of film on its own: 3 1/2 garottes. If you’re familiar with the novel, you’ll recognize plenty of other discrepancies, both large and small. He wasn’t in the novel either, but there he is, entertaining Lord Mountbatten with Lucy Eyelesbarrow. Miss Marple wouldn’t use this phrase but I will because she’d agree: as if!Īnother major change was adding a completely new character to investigate. He also murders one less person than in the novel, because hey, he’s doing it all for love and not for love of money. The largest, without a doubt, is reworking the murderer’s motivation to make us ooze with sympathy for the trap in which he finds himself. McGillicuddy Saw! That’s the title used in the American market since the British publishers believed that Americans wouldn’t recognize the railway reference in the title.) (Note: You may also see this titled What Mrs.

4.50 from paddington 2004