Who would have thought that a Guardian feminist reviewer would miss the hidden misogyny in this TV adaptation (A gloriously grim start to Christie’s crime saga, 7 April). We do indeed get the “Agatha Christie we deserve” – or rather, we get the TV adaptations we deserve, if by this we mean screenplays that mistake bleakness for profundity and cliche for character – and that reveal an innate misogyny that has little to do with Christie’s often complex, courageous, unexpected female characters.
Take Mrs Argyle. In the book, she’s conflicted, a social reformer (probably a Guardian reader!) whose painful longing for children and blindly possessive attitude to those she adopts is at the heart of the story. But here, she’s a cruel, racist abuser who even in Lucy Mangan’s review pretty much deserves to die. Well hello there, bad (adoptive) mother stereotype! And what about Gwenda, the secretary? In the book she’s a complex, compassionate woman in her late 30s. In the screenplay she’s a walking, or rather tottering, youthful cliche who, with her high heels and low-cut dresses, bitchy remarks and gold-digging instincts, fulfils yet more misogynistic stereotypes.
These representations of women are, like the whole screenplay, far more old-fashioned than Agatha Christie ever was. This kind of writing hides its own dark secrets of misplaced nostalgia and misogyny. Agatha Christie may not be everyone’s favourite. But her varied representations of women have provided me with many more role models than these “dark” TV screenplays.
Emily Richards
Salisbury, Wiltshire
• The real mystery concerning the BBC production of the Agatha Christie story, Ordeal By Innocence, is not who is the murderer, but why the Agatha Christie estate allowed Sarah Phelps to change the ending.
Colin Bower
Nottingham
• Ordeal By Innocence – sorry, Lucy, but it bears only the faintest resemblance to Agatha Christie’s novel. Gratuitous “extra” scenes, omission of important characters, intrusive throbbing unnecessary background music, all combine to make a well-constructed thriller into a sensational horror story. Perhaps the BBC needed the padding to make it last three hours – and catch the interest of people who perhaps don’t know the novel. The cast, of course are superb, lending their talents to this over-egged adaptation. Pity.
Marcia Bennie
London
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