OK, everyone! This is it! This is the last new Miss Marple Masterpiece Mystery! episode that PBS will be airing during their summer Mystery! bonanza, and it’s on tonight!
The Blue Geranium is indeed a Miss Marple mystery… which is great to know! Actually, The Blue Geranium is an Agatha Christie short story … which is still great to know! (If you read my previous entry about The Secret of Chimneys, and the fact that it was an Superintendent Battles mystery novel, then you know what I mean!) I think it’s always clever when they air mystery episodes which feature true depictions of the works by the highlighted authors, and not changes the producers think the public should see!
Anyway… The very talented Julia McKenzie (again) appears as Miss Marple. And, as an added bonus for all of the Masterpiece Mystery! fans amongst us>>> Sharon Small (Barbara Havers in Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley Mystery televized mysteries) is going to be one of the featured actors (or should that be actresses?!!?)
After looking around on the PBS site, I came away with two very interesting (to me, anyway!) tidbits… Julia McKenzie says that she “had hardly read any” Agatha Christie novels, and that when she first took on the roll of Miss Marple, the scripts had been written for Geraldine McEwan (the previous Miss Marple). I had wondered if the production company was the same for both McEwan and McKenzie, and apparently it is!
But, this posed a mystery to me: Why did McKenzie replace McEwan? I found out, through Google-ing different phrases, that McEwan retired after the third season of her Miss Marple sojourn. I have been a tremendous fan of McEwan since I saw her on Masterpiece Theatre’s Mapp and Lucia miniseries, in the mid 1980s. Actually, had it not been for her absolutely phenomenal portrayal of Lucia, I wonder if I would have ever discovered E. F. Benson… my favorite of all my many authors…
PS>>> What a delight it was to see Caroline Catz (from Doc Martin) as Hazel Instow!
This is a list of authors who just might quench your appetite for more Lilian Jackson Braun, and her The Cat Who… Mystery Series. It’s always sad when you run out of your favorite author’s books, isn’t it?