Wednesday 23 February 2022

Magpie Murders | Official Trailer | BritBox


Magpie Murders, Britbox, review: a whodunit pastiche with a delicious conceit

   


4/5 stars

Lesley Manville stars in an ingenious detective series that pokes fun at...detective series

 

By

Chris Bennion

10 February 2022 • 5:00am

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2022/02/10/magpie-murders-britbox-review-whodunit-pastiche-delicious-conceit/

 

“There is nowhere more dangerous than an English village,” says Alan Conway (Conleth Hill) in the delectable Magpie Murders. And he should know, having become enormously wealthy churning out eight Agatha Christie-lite crime novels about the Teutonic genius Atticus Pünd, a 1950s private detective who cracks seemingly impossible cases from the shires to the wolds. And now, in the grounds of his country pile, the pompous novelist himself lies dead, murdered, without - it seems - having written the final chapter of his final Atticus Pünd novel, titled Magpie Murders. Dangerous places, English villages.

 

Anthony Horowitz, who has adapted his own crime novel, came up with the idea while working on the first series of Midsomer Murders, and that MM runs through this MM like a stick of rock, from the village-green aesthetic to the comical modes of despatch. Do not be fooled, however - Midsomer episodes are neat little headscratchers; Magpie Murders is an elaborate, cryptic puzzle box, with constantly shifting pieces. It is a whodunit about whodunits within a whodunit.

 

The conceit is marvellous. We have the archetypal accidental sleuth - Lesley Manville’s sharp book editor, Susan Ryeland - who zooms off in her vintage open-top sports car to Conway’s quaint Suffolk village (Kersey, which, TV fact fans, was also the setting for the first episode of Lovejoy) to track down the missing final chapter, only to discover she has a murder to solve too.

 

The answer to Conway’s death lies, naturally, within the pages of the unfinished Magpie Murders, which we also see played out, with Tim McMullan as the ace detective. Conway’s murder cannot be solved without the novel and Pünd’s final case cannot be cracked without Ryeland’s help.

 

Confused yet? There’s more. Conway’s final work seemed to predict his own death - both he and Pünd have an inoperable brain tumour - and the novelist crammed his book with people from his life, spoofing their foibles, airing their dirty laundry and ultimately, potentially, pointing the finger at his murderer.

 

This means most actors here are on double-bubble - Pippa Haywood plays Conway’s sadsack sister in the real world and the sister of the murdered Sir Magnus in the novel. Daniel Mays’ rude, interfering country copper DS Locke becomes Conway’s bumbling, brainless bobbie DI Chubb. Matthew Beard doubles as Conway’s spurned lover and Pünd’s sweet, dim assistant. And so on.

 

It is a concept that keeps giving and giving, with the fictional versions giving you clues towards the character and motives of the real-life characters, and vice versa, as you and Ryeland scramble desperately to work out both whodunits at the same time. Real-life characters who you thought Conway didn’t know suddenly appear in Pünd’s world, causing you to rethink all your previous calculations.

 

Occasionally it is maddening, but there is true satisfaction in watching the pieces of Horowitz’s puzzle click into place. I watched with a notepad. I recommend it.

 

If there is a drawback, it is that all this jiggery-pokery makes the characterisation - with the exception of Ryeland and Conway - a little thin, with the supporting cast in both worlds largely drawn from the whodunit stock cupboard, and the “fictional-fictional” case is far harder to care about than the real-fictional one.

 

Submit yourself to all of the tongue-in-cheek genre tomfoolery, however, and it’s a terrific series with enough in-jokes to keep any armchair detective happy - episode three, for instance, begins with a flashback in which Ryeland is telling Conway that he cannot begin with a flashback.

 

In a grey TV landscape crammed with humdrum whodunits, Magpie Murders is a splash of vivid colour.

 

Magpie Murders is on Britbox now

 




Magpie Murders

Magpie Murders is a 2016 mystery novel by British author Anthony Horowitz and the first novel in the Susan Ryeland series. The story focuses on the murder of a mystery author and utilises a story within a story format.

 

The book has been translated into multiple languages and has been adapted into a six-part drama series.

 

Synopsis

Susan Ryeland is the editor of the mystery author Alan Conway, who is known for his well-received series of novels centring upon the detective Atticus Pünd and for being very difficult to work with. Fans are eagerly awaiting Conway's latest novel, rumoured to be the last in the series, but when Susan reads through the manuscript she discovers that it is unfinished. When she travels to Conway's home to retrieve the final chapters, she discovers that he is dead. In order to discover the whereabouts of the final chapters Susan begins an investigation of her own and finds that the novel may have been based on true events, causing someone to murder Conway.

 

Development

Horowitz first developed the concept of Magpie Murders during the first season of Midsomer Murders, which premiered in 1997. He has stated that he wanted the novel to "be more than just a murder mystery story" and to be "a sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing. How the writers come up with the ideas; how these books are formed."

 

Release

Magpie Murders was first released in hardback and e-book format in the United Kingdom on 6 October 2016 through Orion. An audiobook adaptation narrated by Allan Corduner and Samantha Bond was simultaneously released through Orion and BrillianceAudio. The novel was given a release in the United States the following year through Harper and HarperAudio in hardback, e-book, and audiobook format. Paperback editions were released in the United Kingdom in 2017 and the United States in 2018.

 

In the following years the novel has been released into multiple languages that include Korean and Japanese (2018, through Kyŏnggi-do P'aju-si and 東京創元社, respectively), as well as Chinese and German (2019, 新星出版社 and Berlin Insel Verlag, respectively).

 

Adaptation

In July 2020 Deadline announced that PBS’ Masterpiece would adapt the novel into a six-part drama series and air it in the US, and on BritBox in the UK. Horowitz will prepare the script and Masterpiece will produce it along with Jill Green and Eleventh Hour Films. Tim McMullan was signed to portray the character of Atticus Pünd after actor Timothy Spall pulled out of the production due to scheduling issues, while Lesley Manville plays the central character of Susan. Daniel Mays, Alexandros Logothetis, Jude Hill, and Claire Rushbrook are also part of the series' cast.

 

Reception

Reception for Magpie Murders was largely positive, earning a "Rave" rating from the book review aggregator Book Marks based on eight independent reviews.[17] It was reviewed by outlets such as the New York Times and Time magazine, the latter of which called it the "thinking mystery fan’s ideal summer thriller."[18][19][20] Common praise for the series centered upon its characters and the use of the story within a story, with some criticism noting that the story within a story also made it difficult to keep up with the goings on.


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