A delightfully old-fashioned crime caper satisfies nostalgia for the 1980s as well as the Roaring Twenties
Poirot isn't the only beautifully turned-out 1920s murder mystery on ITV3. Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime strolls along at a delightfully leisurely pace, and is the perfect antidote to the fast-cutting and noirish look of modern crime drama. The mysteries always feature fiendish crimes committed by people in plus-fours or silken smoking jackets.
And on their case are the young, frightfully good-looking Beresfords. A droll husband-and-wife detective team, played by James Warwick and Francesca Annis, dedicated to solving mysteries and roaring around country lanes in their Bentley. It is a 1980s version of what the 20s must have been like and thus provides twice the nostalgia.
It's like a terribly British Moonlighting without the will-they-won't-they element. Because they do. At least once an episode, but only in a very chaste way. The kissing is the lips-pressed-together-head-wobbling kind. Not that obscenely-foraging-tongues business you get on programmes nowadays.
Annis is Prudence Beresford, though her husband likes to call her Tuppence. "I can see it, Tuppence! I think I know how it was done!" Once you've stopped sniggering at her name you can truly appreciate the effervescence of a young Annis in full bloom. She looks like one of those pierrot dolls so popular in the 80s, all sculpted brows and cherry lips.
In a departure from the classic TV detective, Tommy Beresford doesn't have an unfortunate home life or a drink problem or indeed an embittered bone in his body. He's a well-adjusted, sexually satisfied young thruster with a devilish pretty wife and the good looks of Ivor Novello. They are regularly held up at gunpoint by thwarted villains and their reaction is always a quizzically raised eyebrow and little else.
Now Midsomer Murders is an unacceptable guilty pleasure, this could be the very thing for all of your lighter-side-of-homicide needs. It takes its time, looks gorgeous and does for posh-on-posh crime what The Wire did for the cap-popping drug lords of Baltimore. Ripping.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/03/agatha-christies-partners-in-crime
Arsenal Oscars The FA World Cup 2018 US constitution and civil liberties State pensions
No comments:
Post a Comment