Thoughts on adaptations inspired by At Bertram's Hotel

I've been alternating between watching episodes of the 1980s Miss Marple with Joan Hickson and the 2000s Marple with Geraldine McEwan, and it's been fascinating to compare their approaches to adapting the books. The Hickson version is mostly faithful, with a few tweaks here and there, most of them things to dramatize something that might have been summarized in the books, condensing several different inspectors under one identity for some character continuity between episodes, and other things to make the stories work better on screen. The McEwan version starts from "how can we make this more camp" and then changes up a lot of plot elements, sometimes even making the answer to whodunnit different. This doesn't always work, but when it does, it's a lot of fun.

And watching two adaptations of the same story is almost always lot of fun. For example, in Pride and Prejudice adaptations, for some reason the actors seem to play Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins very differently from production to production, but all of them are entertaining and also great at capturing aspects of the book characters in different ways. And of course Geraldine McEwan was replaced after a few seasons by Julia McKenzie, who plays Miss Marple very differently in what's technically the same show. Watching more than one adaptation is a really effective way to think about the characters from different angles.

A particularly interesting example for comparing adaptations is At Bertram's Hotel. Some spoilers, but I won't reveal whodunnit just in case anyone cares.( Read more... )