Review
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? review – a classic
whodunnit with delight in every scene
Written and directed by Hugh Laurie, this adaptation
of Agatha Christie’s coastal mystery has it all: tight dialogue, a starry cast
and exquisite 1930s nostalgia
Jack Seale
Sun 9 Apr
2023 22.15 BST
The first
of many good jokes in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (the first of a three-parter
airing on consecutive nights) is a scuffed tee shot. A few lines of beautifully
economical dialogue establish that the golfer in question, playing with the sea
behind him on a gorgeous Welsh links course, regularly disdains the wise
counsel of his younger, fitter caddie, to the gentle amusement of them both.
After he has insisted on using his driver (“Are you sure, sir?”), the way the
ball grubs pathetically along the ground is just right. Everything in this three-part
period whodunnit – originally shown last year on BritBox – is just right.
But the
golf round is soon interrupted by a cry from the bottom of the nearby cliff.
The caddie, Bobby (Will Poulter), scrambles down and finds a man, broken and
dying, who utters the phrase that gives the story its title before his eyes
become finally glassy and still. Bobby checks the corpse for clues, coming
across a photograph of a beautiful but distressed woman, and is then joined
(rather suddenly, given the remoteness of this part of the shore) by a friendly
chap named Roger Bassington-ffrench (Daniel Ings) – “Two small Fs, don’t ask me
what they stand for”. He offers to wait with the body until the police arrive,
but is not seen again afterwards.
In the
ensuing days, as Bobby wonders whether to try to decipher those peculiar dying
words, he is followed by a sinister, staring, bowler-hatted man. Soon it is
clear that anyone digging into the circumstances of the fatal fall will be in
grave danger.
Why Didn’t
They Ask Evans? is a 1934 Agatha Christie novel, but it’s non-Marple,
non-Poirot Christie, which gives the writer adapting it some freedom. In recent
years on the BBC, Sarah Phelps has seized the opportunity to bring out the
pitiless darkness of And Then There Were None, The Witness for the Prosecution
and Ordeal By Innocence. This version of Christie is written and directed by
Hugh Laurie, and is at the other end of the sleuthing spectrum.
Nothing,
however, is ever more delightful than romantic chemistry, of the kind where
within a minute of two characters meeting, we know they love each other and so
do they, even if they never say it. After witnessing death on the seashore,
Bobby returns to the village and has his breath taken away by a familiar face.
Frankie (Lucy Boynton) is an old childhood friend, from the days when she and
Bobby were young enough not to care that she was an aristocrat and he merely a
vicar’s son. She has returned to Marchbolt from London (“It’s full of people,
and yet there’s nobody there”), soon after Bobby has come back from a stint in
the navy.
Brittle and
bold where Bobby is rugged and dependable, Frankie leaps over police cordons,
rides her horse recklessly, quotes Keats and Shakespeare, and generally dares
Bobby to keep up with her. She is the sort of woman who uses the phrase “see
above” to refer back to a previous conversation days earlier. She is a dream,
embodied perfectly by Boynton, who nails the blazing outer confidence and the
lonely disaffection beneath it.
When
Boynton and Poulter get their screwball dialogue purring, you wish it would
never end. Then again, the same is true of Poulter’s scenes with Alistair
Petrie as his fussy father – an ineffectual vicar who delivers the
aforementioned unremarkable sermon – and with Conleth Hill as Dr Thomas, an eccentric
but canny surrogate father figure and player of the terrible golf shot (“see
above”). You could also stand for a lot more of Frankie’s interactions with her
eccentric parents, the lord and lady of the local manor, since Laurie had the
power to cast Jim Broadbent and Emma Thompson to play them.
But, there
is a mystery for Bobby and Frankie, potentially a fine detective duo, to solve.
By the end of a neat first episode, another man has died and something is
assuredly afoot, as Laurie sticks closely to a plot that some previous
dramatisations have seen fit to alter. There is nothing here you would want to
change.
The first
episode of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? aired on ITV and is now available on
ITVX. Episodes two and three will be available on ITVX on Sunday, and air on
Monday and Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment