This article was originally published in The Courier on Saturday 1st August 2015.
Agatha
Christie's Partners In Crime: Sunday,
BBC One
Life
In Squares: Monday, BBC Two
Paul
Whitelaw
Though never as popular as Poirot and
Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford were fond favourites of their
creator Agatha Christie. She first introduced these happily married
sleuths in 1922 and returned to them sporadically throughout her
career. Their final appearance was in the last novel published before
her death in 1973.
The Tommy and Tuppence canon is slim,
however, hence why it's rarely been adapted for television. So,
seeing as Poirot and Marple have been milked dry, no wonder the BBC
have turned to the Beresfords for one more squeeze of the udder.
The first thing you notice about
Agatha Christie's Partners In Crime is how expensive it looks.
That £6m budget is visible in every vintage car, costume and
immaculately dressed location. But these glossy trimmings can't
compensate for the second thing you notice: there is zero chemistry
between David Walliams and Jessica Raine as Tommy and Tuppence.
Walliams has shown in the past that
he's a decent dramatic actor, but he looks painfully ill at ease
here. Then again, even the world's greatest Thesp might struggle with
such a poorly written role.
By rights, we should regard Tommy as
a charming idler who gradually overcomes his natural cowardice by
plunging into danger alongside his intrepid wife. But he comes across
in this adaptation as such a soggy bore, it's no wonder Tuppence
looks so exasperated with him. Their adventures are supposed to be a
thrilling escape from their aimless existence, not from their
marriage. A few flashes of warmth aside, they don't even seem to like
each other very much.
Raine fares better as Tuppence, whose
thirst for adventure drives the plot. Ably assisted by a bevy of attractive hats, she plays her with a kind of
prim seriousness that occasionally bubbles over into breathless
enthusiasm. It's telling that the best scenes involve her
investigating the case alone. But she's got no chance of injecting
any spark into her scenes with Walliams.
Even moments which should play to his
comic strengths – e.g. Tommy being propositioned by prostitutes –
are played monotonously straight. It's as if he's deliberately acting
against his natural instincts, to prove there's more to him than camp
tomfoolery. All he's proved is there's less.
However, despite his flat
performance, the show does work in places. It wisely obeys one of the
cardinal comic-thriller rules, namely that the villains must be
genuinely threatening. Indeed, Partners In Crime is
surprisingly violent at times, but that just adds to the zippy sense
of peril. If the villains weren't authentically nasty, then we
wouldn't buy into the central conceit of two ordinary people being
dangerously out of their depth.
It also clatters along in a busy riot
of twists and clues, so much so that the plot almost doesn't matter.
While that may irk Christie purists, it does at least result in a
fairly enjoyable piece of Sunday night escapism. You'll barely
remember a thing about it afterwards – Walliams looks lost during
it – but it passes time agreeably enough. So that's £6m well spent, then.
A more modest affair, Life In
Squares is an intriguing period drama about the Bloomsbury Set,
that radical group of intellectuals who cocked a snook – and more
besides – at the strictures of Victorian England.
It's an elegantly claustrophobic
meditation on sex and art as intensely entwined bedfellows, as
Virginia Woolf and her artist sister Vanessa fight to establish
independence years ahead of their time. An intelligently written, subtly performed and beautifully photographed slow-burner
with occasional flashes of fire.
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