“How can someone murder three people in an English village without it being noticed?” This simple question is at the heart of what has made Agatha Christie the world’s most popular novelist. How is it that England’s green and pleasant land can be so riddled with people willing to poison, stab and bludgeon their neighbours? It is a premise that has become a core part – ho ho ho! – of the BBC’s festive programming, which returns this year with a 1950s spin on Christie’s 1939 novel, Murder Is Easy.
On the train to London, Luke Fitzwilliam (Rye Lane’s David Jonsson), freshly arrived from Nigeria, encounters a curious old lady, Lavinia Pinkerton (Penelope Wilton). “I have to report,” she tells the young civil servant, ominously, “murder.” Miss Pinkerton has, she believes, witnessed two – maybe three – murders, but before she can arrive at Scotland Yard she’s mowed down by a rogue motorist. Coincidence? Not in the mind of Fitzwilliam, who immediately heads to Miss Pinkerton’s village, Wychwood, to investigate the crimes. There, he teams up with Bridget Conway (The Rings of Power’s Morfydd Clark), a former secretary who is now engaged to the obnoxious Lord Whitfield (Tom Riley). As they nose around the village’s business, their mutual attraction grows, just as the body count rises.
