Agatha Christie's The Witness for the Prosecution review – a world where any evil is possible
Kim Cattrall is
tender and quietly desperate by turns in this expertly cast,
perfectly crafted murder mystery.
Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan
Tuesday 27
December 2016 07.10 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/dec/27/witness-for-the-prosecution-review-kim-cattrall
It’s 1923. He’s
a poor young man, she’s a wealthy widow in a Holland Park mansion.
There’s a jealous housekeeper and a weighty candlestick in the
drawing room. It’s Agatha Christie on Boxing Day.
I don’t think I’ve
had a happier hour all Christmas than last night’s opening episode
of The Witness for the Prosecution (BBC1). Perfectly crafted,
expertly cast and beautifully scripted by Sarah Phelps, who gave us
her brilliant adaptation of And Then There Were None last year, it
was simply all you could want from your Boxing Day treat.
Sex and the City’s
Kim Cattrall (to give her her full official title) is the wealthy
widow, Emily French, who buys and discards young lovers under the
watchful, appalled and fascinated eyes of her housekeeper Janet
(Monica Dolan). It sounds like a retread of her Samantha role in
SATC, but in fact she made French tender and quietly desperate by
turns in a performance far more akin to her subtle, heartbreaking
turn as Rudyard Kipling’s wife in My Boy Jack a few years ago. And
may I say that her English accent survived the line: “After that
debacle with plates and glasses, what will you do?” – which is
quite the cruellest collection of words ever put into the mouth of
anyone charged with reproducing postwar British vowels without being
born to the purple – with an aplomb that I think deserves a special
Bafta. See to it, please, could you?
The story, at least
so far, is relatively simple. French is found bludgeoned to death in
her home shortly after Leonard Vole (Billy Howle), her latest lover,
whom she has made sole beneficiary of her will, is – according to
Janet – seen leaving the house. Vole’s girlfriend Romaine Heilger
(Andrea Riseborough, genuinely enigmatic, and genuinely shocking in
her pivotal scene) says she can alibi him but when she finds out the
extent of his infidelity, withdraws her testimony and is immediately,
gleefully gathered to the bosom of the Crown to become a witness for
the prosecution.
His lawyer, John
Mayhew (Toby Jones, as delicate and nuanced as ever) remains
convinced of Vole’s innocence. But is Janet or Romaine lying? Or
both? Or, double-bluffingly, neither? Maybe Vole – who, in Phelps’
and Howle’s version, seems less of a chancer or con artist than a
naive young man as hopelessly out of control of his destiny in
French’s world as he was in the trenches of France where we first
meet him – finally rebelled against life as a lapdog and killed
her. All will be revealed, but it is a measure of the production’s
quality that it almost doesn’t matter. The evocation of this
shell-shocked, grief-stricken period of history is really the thing –
in the hostility of her fellow chorus girls to the Austrian Romaine,
to Howle’s reduction to “being priced like a piece of meat”
instead of coming home to the hero’s welcome his savaged generation
were promised, to Mayhew’s ruined lungs and his broken wife (Hayley
Carmichael, mesmerising with barely a word spoken) sitting in their
late son’s empty bedroom, there is an all-pervading sense of people
moving reluctantly into and about in a world where any evil is now
possible. No certainties any more, and no comfort anywhere.
I doubt there has
ever been more brought by a cast, crew and writer to Agatha Christie.
It is the most gorgeous gift to the viewer and this one at least
looks forward with delighted anticipation and gratitude to unwrapping
its second half next week.
Character
descriptions
John Mayhew
Romaine Heilger
Leonard Vole
Janet McIntyre
Emily French
Alice Mayhew
Sir Charles Carter
KC
Date: 12.12.2016
Last updated: 12.12.2016 at 14.54
Category: BBC One;
Drama; Commissioning
John Mayhew
Played by Toby Jones
Burdened by poverty
and guilt, John Mayhew lives a grey and passionless existence.
Leonard’s case changes everything for this exhausted solicitor; his
personal connection to the young man fires Mayhew with an unexpected
determination to fight for him, to stop at nothing to prove Leonard's
innocence…
Romaine Heilger
Played by Andrea
Riseborough
A child of the First
World War, Romaine Heilger emerges from the depths of the European
bloodbath an ingenious survivor and afraid of nothing. At heart a
loner, this Austrian singer’s enigmatic allure commands attention
wherever she roams; Romaine is destined to enter the limelight sooner
or later…
Leonard Vole
Played by Billy
Howle
Haunted by his time
at the front, Leonard Vole has been spat out of the war restless,
disillusioned and incapable of settling on a job. A friendless
innocent in a corrupt world, the odds stacked against him, Leonard is
accused of a brutal murder and only one person can save him from the
noose…
Janet McIntyre
Played by Monica
Dolan
Devoted to the point
of possessive, Emily French’s loyal housekeeper has an uncanny
ability to pre-empt her mistress’s practical as well as emotional
needs, suggesting a bond that surpasses a platonic master-servant
relationship. However, Janet’s carefully controlled universe is
challenged with the arrival of Leonard Vole…
Emily French
Played by Kim
Cattrall
The staggeringly
wealthy widow Emily French is beautiful, glamorous and bored. Used to
getting exactly what she wants, she glides through the London
highlife, indulging in champagne, raucous nightclubs and meaningless
affairs with her favourite pastime: younger men.
Alice Mayhew
Played by Hayley
Carmichael
Stifled by years of
repressed emotion, Alice has as much verve and vigor as the grey
meals she makes Mayhew for dinner. Haunted by the memory of her son
who died at war, her few, precious moments of happiness are spent in
his bedroom, left perfectly intact since the moment he left.
Sir Charles Carter
KC
Played by David Haig
Whilst he enjoys a
hearty lunch, this wealthy barrister salivates even more over the
prospect of arguing sensational crime cases. He considers Leonard’s
case to be a lost cause, until he finds out just how wealthy Leonard
will be if he’s proved innocent.
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