Teresa’s Review of “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” (1980)
This review of “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” (1980) ranks the movie in two categories.
Fidelity to text: 5 cliff shoves
Practically everything in the book is in the novel, other than explaining how a suspect is identified and turning a boring letter into a dramatic ending.
Quality of movie on its own: 3 cliff shoves
A leisurely book makes for a draggy movie. This film lasted for three hours. A tight script that removed the extraneous material would have made for a zippy two-hour movie with nothing lost.
Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.
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Thus, we saw the 2009 version of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? months ago and it was … bizarre. Throwing Miss Marple into the mix was just the beginning of a radical rewrite. I will say this. That movie zipped along. It zipped along so fast that entire chunks of the plot happened for no logical reason, other than the scriptwriter had to tie up all the loose ends, had run out of time to think it through, and so threw everything possible at the screen in the hopes that it worked.
This version has the opposite problem. Virtually every word of the text is up there onscreen: as dialog, as setting, as plot, as each and every character, no matter how minor. Watch this film and you won’t have to bother reading the novel, that’s how complete it is. The major change comes near the end. It replaces (for which I am grateful) a letter-reading scene with a confrontation with the villain, a threat to Frankie, and her eventual rescue by Bobby. Actual dramatic action, what a concept.
There’s plenty to like about this film. We’ll start with the leads. Francesca Annis plays Frankie. She’s 35, a little old to be playing a bright young thing but she’s lively and vibrant and you’ll stop noticing. James Warwick, playing Bobby, is 33. He’s also too old for his part, but again, you won’t care. They had so much chemistry that they moved on from playing Frankie and Bobby to playing Tuppence and Tommy in the 1983 series Partners in Crime. Another very nice point about this version is it didn’t castrate Bobby, the way the 2009 version did. You get the impression that Frankie and Bobby genuinely love each other even if they’re too inhibited to say so. This Bobby is easy-going, but he’s not going to be Frankie’s doormat, nor is she a harridan in training.
John Gielgud plays Bobby’s father, the vicar. Having just watched him play Lord Caterham in 1982’s The Seven Dials Mystery was … odd, but acceptable. Yes, we saw them out of order. The roles are similar; a long-suffering father dealing with flighty offspring. He steals the scene every time he comes onscreen.
There’s also Leigh Lawson playing Roger Bassington-ffrench. He was great, a wonderful Christie villain. You can understand how she let him get away with murder. Multiple murders, no less! It’s the charm. Yep, Roger escapes the gallows despite having earned himself three hangings. He even confesses to Frankie that he would have murdered his nephew (killing #4) but he would have made it quick because he liked the boy. The nephew stood in the way of inheriting Merrowway Court and well, Roger didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
Why did Roger murder John Savage, a non-relative who did not stand in the way of him inheriting Merroway Court? Because John Savage had £700,000 pounds to leave to some lucky beneficiary. Roger needed the money to restore Merroway Court to its original magnificence after he murdered his brother and nephew to get it. It’s a convoluted plot, the sort that works in a book when you can page back a few chapters and reread a section. In a movie? In pre-DVD days? Not so good.
I suppose that’s another reason to be agonizingly faithful to the text, just to make sure it’s completely clear and understandable to the viewer.
This production marked Agatha Christie’s return to television. The old girl had watched too many terrible adaptations and had lost all enthusiasm for the medium. Theatrical films were still being made, but no TV until after her death. The estate settled on using her non-Poirot and non-Marple properties and Evans became a test case to see if it could be done. The production studio — London Weekend Television (LWT) — did it up right. They hired an all-star cast, fully utilized England’s stately homes, and spent over £1 million to make everything on screen look perfect. They succeeded too!
The film was so successful that it led to The Agatha Christie Hour in 1982 (using non-Poirot and non-Marple stories) and then Partners In Crime in 1983, using low-risk stories from the Tommy and Tuppence series. Christie was back on television, for good or ill. I believe that it wasn’t just the style at the time in adapting classic novels for British television that led to such an exhaustingly faithful adaptation. LWT did not want to make any mistakes or piss off the estate. They weren’t about to let some hack screenwriter mangle Agatha’s text and thus lose access to all those novels, plays, and short stories. All that money! All that prestige! Just waiting for some lucky production company to cut the right deal with the estate.
Should you watch this version? Sure, you can buy the DVD on Amazon (we get a few cents if you buy here). It may be slow compared to the 2009 version but it has the benefit of coherence and plausibility, important parts of a good movie. It’s fabulous eye-candy. The clothes, the settings, the cars, the vintage aeroplanes, the all-star cast, the first-class tour of British buildings from charming cottages and garden follies to mansions big enough to house a hundred family members, guests, and the staff needed to run the place. It is an astonishing production. The pacing will give you all the time you need to gawk at the scenery and appreciate what a £1,000,000 could buy in 1980.
