Agatha Christie's Miss Marple
Rarely has one actor been so thoroughly associated with a role as David Suchet has been with Agatha Christie's inimitable Poirot, despite legendary performers like Albert Finney (who was Oscar nominated in Murder on the Orient Express) and Peter Ustinov also tackling the part. Christie's other iconic detective, mild mannered spinster Jane Marple, has had a somewhat more varied screen life, though if one were to associate an actress with the role, chances are it would be Joan Hickson, who played Miss Marple for around eight years from 1984 to 1992. While Gracie Fields had essayed the role for television in the fifties, it was the ebullient Margaret Rutherford who was first strongly associated with Marple in a series of big screen comedy-mysteries which were quite popular in the early sixties. (In fact MGM attempted to launch a Poirot series in the wake of the Marple successes, but their only effort, The Alphabet Murders, tanked, perhaps due to the somewhat odd casting of Tony Randall in the role.) Rutherford's Marple wasn't exactly Christie's character, but she was memorable and amusing. Over twenty years later Hickson (who had a small role in the Rutherford Marple Murder, She Said) stepped into the role, to the approval of Christie herself, who had evidently once told Hickson that when Hickson was a bit older, she hoped the actress would play the part. The Hickson Marples may seem quaint to younger viewers who have become used to the latest reboots featuring actresses like Geraldine McEwan or Julia McKenzie, versions which have in some instances radically changed Christie's plotlines in a risky gambit, done perhaps to keep longtime fans guessing, that has nonetheless angered purists who feel Christie can't be bettered. While actresses as notable as Angela Lansbury and Helen Hayes have also stepped into the Marple role, Hickson's characterization will probably forever be held up as the paradigm. She may not have had the duration of Suchet in Poirot, but her impact can't be minimized.

Completely restored and remastered in stunning high definition, see Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple as you never have before! Joan Hickson, the actress Agatha Christie herself wanted for the role, stars as the shrewd sleuth in twelve thrilling whodunits: Watch as Miss Marple puts her perceptive powers to good use and gets to the bottom of even the most complex crimes in this beloved series.

Miss Marple: Volume One
The Murder at the Vicarage, The Moving Finger, The Body in the Library and A Murder is Announced.

Miss Marple: Volume Two
They Do It With Mirrors, A Pocketful of Rye, 4:50 From Paddington, The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side.

Miss Marple: Volume Three
A Caribbean Mystery, At Bertram's Hotel, Nemesis, Sleeping Murder.

Extras:
A Very British Murder - Part One: The New Taste for Blood (1080i; 50:04) features Lucy Worsley in a very well done examination of murder and its ineluctable interest by the general public. Worsley starts with an actual murder from a couple of centuries ago, but then starts to examine how tales of murder started to ripple out into the general public consciousness, ultimately becoming literature in the hands of writers like Dickens, Doyle, and of course Christie.

A Very British Murder - Part Two: Detection Most Ingenious (1080i; 50:43)

A Very British Murder - Part Three: The Golden Age (1080i; 50:05)

Source
Company: BBC
Release Date: October 2014
Edition: Standard