BONG!!!
WHO NEEDS FORENSICS WHEN CADFAEL'S ABOUT?

Why are TV producers wasting their time producing endlessly tiresome forensic dramas? Waking the Dead, Silent Witness... yawn yawn? We all know science is not a substitute for a good mystery-solving mind!
Cadfael, for instance, needs no microscopes or body-fluid samples. He simply gets the job done through careful deduction (the vital clue usually involves a rare herb found under the victim's fingernail). Before you know it - BONG! - that crafty medieval monk has solved the crime and they can return to the monastry ready for matins and a nice cup of mead.

Just one more thing....

I was gadding about Southwark, ducking and diving, and I discovered this street named after my favourite detective.

I want to explore more streets named after our mystery-solving heros.... so watch this space

By Timothy! Paul Temple's back!

Thank heavens for BBC7 and its resurrection of classic radio crime capers! I've been getting really into the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries and Paul Temple's crime-fighting efforts, usually concerning opium-smuggling and hood-winking a glamorous flapper. I love the heros' cut glass accents and the 'go'r blimey gov' of their lower class side-kicks. Rest-assured it all ends up fine and dandy in the end. Rescue a few more of these long-lost programmes from the vaults BBC7 - they are simply spiffing!!

Can Dr Mark Sloane fill Perry Mason's boots?

Nothing can beat the swaggering drama and build up of the Perry Mason theme tune. It captures the drama of the courtroom and the thrill of the chase...

The theme sums up Perry Mason - 80s courtroom drama chockablock with perms and shoulder pads. Perry, is so darn good, with his trusty cuddly legal secretary and his permed action-side-kick who gets into scrapes and arrives with a vital clue at the last minute (phew!), he always gets the job done. And it feels like a meaty mystery - a feature length trawl through double bluffs - and I feel satisfied after a feast on a Mason mystery.

Diagnosis Murder, on the other hand, is wafer-thin and leaves me hungry for more mystery! Dick van Dyke has got the action side-kick in the form of his son Barry, who plays a cop, but the hospital/police action really doesn't gel together. Plus he always manages to get a dance in somehow? It does make me laugh though, the credits feature a stethoscope and a magnifying glass (how long did it take to come up with that?).
Diagnosis Murder's website hilariously comments that CBS have stopped making new episodes of Diagnosis Murder because 'research revealed the average viewer has stopped watching'... Er... so does that just leave me guys?

Poirot's gone all serious and lost his 'do-do-do-do-dooo'!

Further to the Cowgirl Sleuth's comments, I am alarmed at how serious ITV have made Poirot.

Surely ITV are missing the point. Poirot is a ridiculous character, with an egg shaped head, fastidious dress sense (a serious case of OCD if you ask me) and a silly waxed moustashe. But as we're smiling at his pomposity, he cuts in and solves the mystery with his 'little grey cells'.

The old version of David Suchet's Poirot was light-hearted, with the gloriously intriguing 'do-do do-do-dooo's' of the theme tune and Captain Hastings bumbling about in his panama hat. I loved it when he wrinkled up his nose to the changing fashions and tastes. We're meant to be amused at Poirot's pomposity not bored by it. ITV seem to have lost this essence with its launch of the new-look Poirot. The humour and charm is lost amid the slick production values and forgettable theme tune. Poirot is the same chap but the world seems to have changed around him towards a high-gloss world of all-star cameos, glam lipstick and soft-focus. I fear that Poirot has lost his 'do-do-do-do -doooo' for good...

Is ITV’s strive to standardise mystery dramas through new branding and marketing techniques having a detrimental effect on the quality of Agatha Christie’s dramas?

Well then, I was quite pleased when I head Miss Marple was making a comeback to our screens. Memories of the grand dame Joan Hickson who made Miss Marple her own came flooding back.

The first series of the newly branded “Marple” (more about that later) was agreeable, cleverly using 1950s style pulp fiction font for the titles etc. The production of some of the better Miss Marples’, such as The Body in the Library or 4.50 from Paddington were a good start I thought. They really went to town on making the set designs animated with 1950s fashions and interiors. Full skirts, headscarves, busts, hips and a hostess trolley thrown in for good measure, made the show come alive, or did it?

Here is my problem. I think ITV with all their fancy set designers and wardrobe assistants have missed Christie’s point. If one reads a Miss Marple Mystery and studies the characters in them, they certainly are not your happy go lucky friendly neighbour type. The murderers Miss Marple uncovers are a symbol of the 1950s themselves; scarred by war, austere, down trodden and grey in the heart and the mind. Take Clothide Bradbury Scott, the witchy murderer in Nemesis, who has a penchant for making hot milky drinks you’re not going to forget in a hurry! She’s not a hip hooraying Diane Dors stylee in full skirt and polka dots; she is cold and calculating, and scared of the modern, changing world.

In all fairness Nemesis is yet to be remade by ITV, but I dread the high gloss version. They’ll have Clothide in heart shaped sunglasses before you could swig that milky drink down in one!

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