Murder is Easy is a major new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel of the same name.
This two-part thriller is directed by Meenu Gaur (Zinda Bhaag, World on Fire) and stars David Jonsson (Industry, Rye Lane), alongside Morfydd Clark (Lord of the Rings, Saint Maud) and Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey, After Life).
England, 1954. On a train to London, retired policeman Fitzwilliam (Jonsson) meets the mysterious Miss Pinkerton (Wilton), who tells him that a killer is on the loose in the sleepy English village of Wychwood under Ashe. The villagers believe the deaths are mere accidents, but Miss Pinkerton knows otherwise – and when she’s later found dead on her way to Scotland Yard, Fitzwilliam feels he must find the killer before they can strike again. Because for a certain kind of person, murder is easy …
Murder is Easy also stars Tom Riley (The Nevers, Ill Behaviour) as Lord Whitfield, Douglas Henshall (Shetland, In Plain Sight) as Major Horton, Mathew Baynton (Ghosts, Wonka) as Dr Thomas and Mark Bonnar (World on Fire, Guilt)
BritBox interviewed Nimra Bucha to get to know her character a bit better:
Where do we meet your character (Mrs. Humbleby)?
It’s one of those great Agatha Christie stories with a fantastic ensemble of characters, and you meet them all at once. So Mrs. Humbleby is one of the people that you meet when you’re being introduced to Wychwood under Ashe and the characters that live in that village. And there is something interesting about her because she seems to be the only person of that colour living in that village. And you have to remember that this is the 1950s, it wasn’t like today. She came with her husband when the British left India. You keep thinking, What is she doing in this village? In this village in England? In Wychwood? In the ’50s? But then you find out.
What did you enjoy about the scripts?
Well, audiences, I think, always love a good Agatha Christie. It’s a special treat. You can very seldom go wrong with a good Agatha Christie story, but I think this particular one takes the story, turns it a little bit around, and makes it very new while still being true to the book. I think it also gives you a bit of food for thought, which comes as a bonus of a really, really fast-paced, just fabulous script. I read the script in a couple of hours, and it wasn’t a case of me just like me looking for where my parts were, but it reads so fast, and it’s concerned with so many things that we are concerned about now in this day and age.
It’s nice to have entertaining stories do that. I think we’re still struggling with race and we’re still struggling with class, and how people relate to each other from different classes and different races. And now more than ever, who is the ‘other’? Who is the outsider in the village? Who is the person who doesn’t belong? All of those things. A theme of belonging is one of the important things that comes out of the story. I think we’ve got a good combination here of very meaningful content and very entertaining – and very glamorous! – television.
Catch the limited series, Murder is Easy, on BritBox from March 7.
