Has there ever been so much fuss about an Agatha Christie adaptation? This year’s dose of Christmas homicide, Murder is Easy, has now received a pasting in the Mail, the Telegraph and the Spectator.
The problem? A black actor, David Jonsson, has been cast in the lead role. But it’s not the casting so much as the context that has offended commentators – he has been reimagined as a Nigerian immigrant, on his way from a position in the Colonial Office to a job in Whitehall. This version is set in the 1950s (the book was published in the 30s) and there are touches of contemporary racism – when the hero enters a pub, it falls dead silent. The local doctor is the proud owner of a tract entitled Race Hygiene: A Campaign to Create a Master Race. There is a scene where Jonsson’s character is told by a friend that he is “collaborating with his oppressors”.
This theme doesn’t overwhelm the plot, which remains Christie-esque with vicars, hat paint and a character who keels over twice: first at a dinner party and then while playing tennis.
Still, the national broadcaster has been accused of walloping us round the head with a lecture when we have a mulled-wine hangover, making “nostalgia … a thought crime” and murdering “one of the Queen of Crime’s novels”.
“If the BBC wants to lecture us on our social attitudes it could do so, rather more easily, in original dramas,” says the Mail. “So why the need to also tamper with stories written in a different era, in a time of different values, and thus enrage a portion of its modern audience?”
The first thing to say to these complaints, which tend to surface whenever a non-white actor is cast in a traditionally white role, is that all adaptations tamper with original stories. There’s little point, artistic or otherwise, in mere reproduction: especially when you can still buy the novel, or watch an earlier version (there’s a 2008 production of Murder is Easy starring Benedict Cumberbatch).
The second is that we expect new TV shows to acknowledge contemporary attitudes: it would feel distinctly odd if they didn’t. We’re quite used to this when it comes to women in period dramas; modern productions can’t help being a bit feminist, if only to signal through emphasis or exposition that they are not entirely on board with the way women were treated back then. It passed without comment (perhaps we barely noticed it) in Murder is Easy, when ideas such as women being underpaid were leaned on.
Agatha Christie novels, by the way, are sprinkled with references to “natives”, “Oriental temperaments” and occasionally the n-word. Imagine if this were straightforwardly translated to the screen. You can’t treat modern audiences as if they still hold 1930s values – in fact, TV like this would feel like a lecture in the other direction: on the virtues of outright racism.
And just why is one set of political opinions characterised as “a lecture” and another “old-fashioned fun”? Is this a subtle admission that progressive views might somehow be “morally improving”? There’s no reason a modern outlook has to feel po-faced and boring; on the contrary, an out-of-date drama risks seeming stiff, stuffy and lacking self-awareness. There are opportunities for shock, interest and even humour in the moral culture gaps between the past and the present. In any case, Murder is Easy doesn’t berate modern audiences for their values so much as reassure them of their superiority – they are so much more enlightened, it tells them, than 1950s bigots. Viewers seemed to enjoy it, at least according to a separate article in the Daily Mail.
Should attempts at ethnic diversity really be confined to “original dramas”? If so, this would exclude non-white actors from a very large chunk of British TV. The nostalgia market is huge. We are a nation that likes to tell ourselves the same stories over and over: Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Dracula, Mary Poppins, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre … a new version of one of these appears about once a year. Make one, and you know millions will watch: this is not the case with every original drama. The classics are also how we sell ourselves abroad. Britain is a relatively open and tolerant country: to insist on an all-white image “for accuracy” would be its own sort of untruth – out of line with our values.
Murder is Easy has done something fairly fresh: it has shown how period dramas can be both diverse and authentic. Simply swapping out a white character for a black one doesn’t always work: that way you can end up with the inadvertent thesis that the past was a multicultural utopia. Jonsson has told interviewers he is not a fan of colourblind casting – it was his character’s realistic backstory that persuaded him to take on the role: in the 50s, many Nigerians came to Britain for employment or education, where they faced considerable hostility. The storyline fits.
It works too, with the spirit of the book. Murder is Easy is an angry little novel, concerned with sexism and class. But these are familiar themes in such a setting; audiences can nod along with the idea that women and the lower classes faced certain problems, at least back then. Even the revelation that an old lady in a twinset is capable of solving (or committing) a murder now lacks a certain freshness. So it’s fun to see a different set of prejudices challenged in a way that also seems to challenge the audience.
• Martha Gill is an Observer columnist
