Year Released: 2022
Directed by: Hugh Laurie
Starring: Will Poulter, Lucy Boyton, Daniel Ings, Jonathan Jules, Hugh Laurie
(Not Rated, Three part series, 58 min. each episode)
Genre: Mystery and Suspense, Comedy, Romance

Dr. Nicholson: You’ve caused quite a stir in the village.
Frankie Derwent: That’s how I like my villages.

Suddenly remakes of Agatha Christie are all the rage. Most of them are tres ordinaire, as my father would say, but a few are quite good. This film fits that category.

Maybe that’s because the witty and playful Hugh Laurie (known to Americans as the inimitable Dr. House – a play on words for Holmes) wrote the adaptation, directed it, and actually plays a role himself. When a rather vapid, ingratiating journalist called the series “his baby,” the humble Laurie politely corrected her, saying it was indeed, Agatha Christie’s, and then went on the praise her.

Hugh Laurie comes off in that interview as a real fan of Christie, very knowledgeable of her works, in contrast, I am sad to say, to the vainglorious Kenneth Branagh, who has used Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022) as costly antidotes for a sagging career. (Ugh! Poirot’s mustache is an abomination, its excess a parallel to Branagh’s ego, and the explanation of it in Death on the Nile is a ridiculous detour.)

Hugh Laurie has the good sense to keep close to the novel Christie penned in 1934. It is filled with plot twists and surprises, a typical mental labyrinth that only Christie herself could create. And lots of fun, too – something we all need right now.

In this rollicking novel, the central whodunnit is augmented with a puzzle: a young man named Bobby Jones discovers the body of a stranger who has just tumbled over the side of a cliff—but the man is alive, still, when Bobby runs to him, and holds on just long enough to utter a quizzical final message. “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” he asks the stunned Bobby, before shuffling off the mortal coil forever. –Olvia Rutigliano

Oh, Laurie does infuse a little class tension; vicar’s son Bobby Jones (Will Poulter) is a caddy, not a golf player himself as Christie penned it, when an errant ball leads him to discover the dead body. Apparently, being a vicar’s son is a somewhat lowly social position in class-conscious England at the time, and he sees his childhood friend Lady Frances Derwent (a show stopping Lucy Boynton) as out of his league.

Of course Frankie, the effervescent socialite’s preferred moniker, isn’t having any of it. That social distance, even if it appears to be largely on Bobby’s part not hers, prompts one critic to posit the deeper reason behind their investigation of what the pair now suspect is a murder not an accident. What starts as a lark and soon becomes very dangerous allows the two to be together free of class distinctions. Even if their role-playing mimics that social distance, as when Bobby assumes the role of Frankie’s chauffeur, and socialite Frankie has to whisper the proper protocol when he slips up and talks to a servant. Like all good chauffeurs, he is to stand resolutely by the vehicle and talk to no one, unless, of course he is like Father Brown’s Sid, who leans against a polished Rolls Royce with an unmatched languid flair.

Part of the fun in this film comes from the fabulous Emma Thompson (her role here a tasty retort to her ex, Kenneth Branagh’s new Christie productions?) and the wonderful Jim Broadbent, playing Frankie’s parents. It’s just a cameo, but their interchange actually holds the clue to the entire puzzle, just not in this clip, though. You will have to watch the whole thing to figure that out.

I will leave it to you to unravel the mystery of the photograph in the dead man’s pocket, the encounters with lookalike for said photo that Bobby finds wandering on the grounds of a local sanatorium (very Woman in Whitish), Hugh Laurie as the morose and forbidding Dr. James Nicholson who runs it, a carnival scene almost s deadly as Hitchcock’s climax in Strangers on a Train, the fishy suicide of a millionaire convinced he had cancer, a double kidnapping, an alternately charming and suspicious Roger Babbingon-ffrench, and all the fun with the snooty spelling of his last name, but I must elaborate on the best scene in part two of the three part Brit Box mystery.

It is the elaborate concoction that Bobby, Frankie, and Bobby’s Naval buddy Knocker (Jonathan Jules) dream up to get Frankie inside the house where the suspicious Babbing-ffrench resides with his brother and sister in law. They stage a road accident with Bobby as said victim. What makes the planning sequence so much fun is how each proposed scenario is suggested, with a quick display of said proposal on screen and the evident faults of such. Frankie’s doctor friend even becomes part of the extravagant ruse, happening by coincidentally very much like the doctor in The Third Man to artfully diagnose the perfectly healthy Frankie as concussed. One of the careful additions to their plot being that Frankie has to be a bit bloodied up, thus a vial of the red stuff is supplied by one of the now four brave souls creating controlled chaos outside Bassington-ffrench’s abode.

And just to show why the fun loving Hugh Laurie has a bond with Agatha, I bring up how she got the title. The story goes that she was at a restaurant, and the son of one of her friends had been reading a book. Just as she arrived, he closed its cover, and said, “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” She filed that phrase away in her memories, determined that some day it would be the title of a novel. Hugh Laurie carries on her whimsy in his film.

Not to miss. The best of the three adaptations of the delightful Christie novel. Even you purists will love it.

–Kathy Borich
🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁

Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

Make your viewing even better by washing it down with a good pint, just make sure it is not doctored with morphia. And tip your hat to the staff at the local pub/hotel, The Anglers’Arms, where Bobby stays in his disguise as a chauffeur while he absorbs the local gossip.

And how about some delicious pub grub to go along with your pint, this recipe from Different Drummer’s own Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook.

But I will let Kimberly Killibrew, the Daring Gourmet, tell us about this dish:

A quintessential British dish, Toad in the Hole is comprised of roasted sausages enveloped in a giant, deliciously crispy Yorkshire pudding and served drizzled with onion gravy. Next to Bangers and Mash it’s hard to imagine better comfort food!

The origin of its name is unclear and debated but it certainly is an interesting one! Some have suggested it’s because the sausages resemble a toad sticking its head out of a hole. What we do know is that it has been around since at least the mid 1700’s. It was noted that virtually anything could be baked up and disguised in this big Yorkshire pudding. The idea was clever and served as an ideal way to use up leftovers and tougher scraps of meat that would otherwise have been thrown away, though fine cuts of beef were also used and served in pubs and at home. Nevertheless, the upper crust of old English society snubbed and reviled the dish, considering it vulgar, uncivilized, and an affront to British cuisine!

I bet Frankie would not turn her head up at this, especially if she could share it with Bobby.

Toad in the Hole

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup milk
Salt
Coarse black pepper and Cayenne to taste
Pinch each ginger and nutmeg (optional)
8 thick, short sausages of your choice
1 3/4 ounces drippings
1 small onion, thinly sliced

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. To make batter, sift both flours and salt into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the center. Add combined eggs and milk gradually; whisk until smooth. Add seasonings. Set aside for 15 minutes.

Prick sausages all over with a fork. Place half the drippings in a shallow 6-cup capacity ovenproof dish. Place in oven to heat while preparing sausages. Heat remaining drippings in a large frying pan and cook the sausages for 5 minutes until well browned. Transfer to a plate; add onions to pan and cook for 3 minutes, until soft.

Arrange sausages and onion in the heated dish. Quickly pour batter over sausages and return to oven for 30 minutes, until batter is set and golden. Serve immediately with mustard.

Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook