Join Rhys Bowen and Tasha Alexander as they discuss their favorite (and least) crime televison series, casting decisions, and ponder the perfect actors to play their own leading characters! Rhys Bowen: Tasha, do you watch many mysteries/crime shows on TV? I am not a huge TV viewer and I find that most of the shows…
Mad Men with doctors. That must have been the elevator pitch (lift pitch?) for Breathless, the three-part series that started on Masterpiece Mystery on August 24. For all I know the working title was “Harley Men,” scrapped later when it was determined that American audiences would be expecting motorcycles and not Harley Street physicians. Now…
“Come at once,” the telegram reads. “Need help. Urgent.” Poirot obeys at once. He would not leave his old friend the crime writer Ariadne Oliver in distress, even if that means leaving London for the wilds of Devon where Ariadne is a guest at a country estate. Devon certainly is not Poirot’s preferred milieu. Agatha…
The “Big Four” has a particular meaning in this episode of Poirot, but to those of us who love him as played by David Suchet, the “Big Four” can only refer to Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser), Chief Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson), the inestimable Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran), and the brilliant Belgian himself. (No offense to…
Here’s how it commenced: One night when I was twelve, maybe thirteen, I caught the film Ten Little Indians on TV. It was the 1965 version, not the best (see 1945’s Then There were None) but compelling all the same. The set-up and execution (literally!) really grabbed me: Take ten strangers, strand them in an…
• Are you in the UK? Are you a fanatic for TV's Sherlock, Midsomer Murder, Miss Marple, Poirot, Inspector Morse, and Inspector Lewis? Then would you like to appear on a trivia segment for a TV show, The Crime Thriller Club? (insert shrieking here): “…each week we will be leading up to the Crime Thriller…
In the past month or so, to much local acclaim, two Australian telemovies based on mystery novels by Golden Dagger-winner Peter Temple introduced an interested populace to former criminal lawyer and current gambler/enforcer/cabinet maker/detective Jack Irish. Played on screen by Guy Pearce, Irish is a rakish, rumpled, damaged soul seeking redemption in all the wrong…
Before I watched “The Clocks,” this week’s installment of Poirot on Masterpiece Mystery, I decided to read the book. (Well, it was supposed to be before; I wound up finishing the book after. The best-laid plans and all that…) I’ll admit I haven’t done this before. I usually let the series stand alone, and it…
