Year Released: 2022
Directed by: Peter Cattaneo
Starring: Lesley Manville, Tim McMullan, Alexandros Logothetis, Conleth Hill, Matthew Beard, Michael Maloney
(TV-14, 6 episodes, each 46 minutes long)
Genre: Mystery and Suspense

“The more you know someone, the more likely they are to deceive you.” – Atticus Pünd.

Anthony Horowitz, who brought us the superb Foyle’s War, continues to shine in this double whodunnit. Magpie Murders will also enthrall fans of Agatha Christie as well as those who love Conan Doyle’s Holmes.

Both Christie and Doyle are referenced in some depth, and they even provide us with some esoteric clues.

Magpie Murders revolves around the character Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville), an editor who is given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway’s (Conleth Hill) latest novel, with little idea of how it will change her life.

Well, Susan’s life is changing quite a bit even before the manuscript enters in. Her publisher, Charles Clover (Michael Maloney), is planning on selling the company and desires, or shall we say almost demands with polite but cloying consistency, for her to take over as the CO, something Susan does not want. She loves her job as an editor, even if it means dealing with their star client, Conway, who is as prickly as a pin, their mutual loathing currently reducing communications via email only.

Another potential change for Susan is her boyfriend Andreas’ desire to return to his native Crete. Of course here is where Lesley Manville differs from her character in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, because moving to Crete is last on her list. It is, we also must confess, certainly no Paris.

Ok, our editor is no sleuth, but she must become one when someone throws a spanner (monkey wrench for us Yanks) in the works. The final chapter of Conway’s manuscript is missing, and so is he, if by that we mean, missing from this world, his bloodied body found on the grounds of his country estate, an estate he has named Abbey Grange.

Here is one of many places Horowitz’s knowledge and affinity for Holmes comes in, as Susan herself mentions that Abbey Grange is the setting of one of the Holmes stories centering around a fake burglary. Later on, another link to Holmes, i.e., author Arthur Conan Doyle, appears as well.

***

The second sleuth in our detective duo is, like Holmes, a purely fictional character, Atticus Pünd. the detective created by the now dead best-selling author Alan Conway.

Pünd is no sherlock Holmes, though; he is much more like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. Pünd and Poirot, both foreigners displaced by a war; in Pünd’s case, a German imprisoned in a work camp during WWII because he was against the Nazis.

“He’s a compassionate gentleman; a German refugee of Greek-Jewish descent who survived the concentration camps.”

As the actor Tim McMullan, whom some of you might recognize from the post war episodes of Horowitz’s Foyle’s War, says of Pünd:

“I thought, playing a German, I want to make him very soft-voiced and un-Germanic, a gentle character who has been in a labor camp and has a very empathetic perspective on the human condition.”

Now back to Christie when we see how much of the series depends on wills and the shenanigans about who inherits.

Adding to the Christie like complexity – almost everyone has a motive for doing away with Conway – is an astounding creative spark by Horowitz. The double whodunnit explores two worlds. One, the current reality of Susan Ryeland and two, the fictitious counterpart of Conway’s book, which takes place in England of the late 50s with Pünd in the lead.

Furthering our delight (and confusion, I must admit), is the fact that the malignant – perhaps a word with more depth than one might first imagine – Conway likes playing games with real people, putting those who have offended him in real life as mostly despicable characters in his fiction.

For instance, his gay lover or retired “rent boy” James Taylor becomes Pünd‘s rather thick assistant in the novel. Playing against type in both roles is Matthew beard, whom you might know as the insightful Freudian counterpart to his sometimes thick detective in the wonderful Vienna Blood .

It is supremely difficult to keep all these double characters straight, especially if watching at night with a nice glass of wine, so Different Drummer has decided that Horowitz, like Conway, also loves to play a few games, too. Not nearly a malicious, though.

One such game is from the name of the series itself, and the variations on the “Magpie,” as sets of first a single and then gradually multiple birds catch the camera’s eye. Here are 2 rhymes about that symbolic bird:

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret never to be told.

Or the slightly more ominous Irish and American version:

One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral
Four for a birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven’s the Devil his own self

More versions and in depth analysis here.

Settle in a for superb mystery that mirrors itself like shattered glass reflecting different images, motives, and murders. Or as Pünd himself recounts,

“Fear, envy, anger, and desire,” the deadly motives for murder. You will find a surplus all four in this delightful double whodunnit.

Not to miss. And a wonderful appetizer for the next delicious feast, “The Moonflower Murders,” now on Masterpiece Mysteries.

–Kathy Borich
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Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

What would Susan, our poor editor/sometime sleuth do without her Greek boyfriend Andreas. He takes her mood swings in stride; after all, this has probably been the most stressful week in her life, and so the mellow ancient Greek teacher settles down to watch football (what we Yanks call Soccer) on the telly while she wades through a long a tedious manuscript, which unfortunately is missing the last chapter.

After a long day handling continental travel, so rushed that Susan changes shoes on a moving escalator to be present at a German book conference, she returns to London and has the loveable Andreas there for comfort…and plenty of comfort food, too.

He unpacks fresh hummus, luscious Greek olives, and feta – reportedly the best in the world – and rustles up a platter for her more romantic than a bouquet of flowers.

So, we depart from local English fare, or even the high-end French cuisine served at London’s La Maison restaurant – even if the dinner there provides plenty of clues – in favor of this simple hummus platter.

Food served from love is so much better than even the best and most pricey restaurant dishes, don’t you think?

So cuddle up to your honey and make this platter yourself. It’s as easy as it is delicious.