A Murder is Announced (1/3)

The advertisement in the local paper is a small masterpiece of cheek. A murder will take place, it says, at a named house in the village at a named time, and everyone is welcome. The notice promises a death as casually as a garden fete, and the village, gripped by morbid curiosity, assumes it must be an elaborate prank. It is worded with perfect confidence, the confidence of someone who knows the house and the hour will both hold. On the night, half the town turns up to watch, and somebody obligingly dies.

But the joke is suddenly a police matter, and Inspector Craddock has the luck to find Miss Marple staying at a spa town nearby. She does not have to do much, just point him at where to look first, which is always more useful than it sounds. The dead man is the prank's first victim, and the laughter stops. The house named in the notice is full of people who were there that evening, each with a version of events, and the truth is hiding somewhere among the versions. Craddock is a professional, but the village is new to him, and there is nobody better at reading a village than Miss Marple.

Agatha Christie and Alan Plater wrote it and David Giles directed; the first part went out on 28 February 1985. Joan Hickson is Miss Marple, with Ursula Howells as Miss Blacklock, Renée Asherson as Miss Bunner, Samantha Bond and Simon Shepherd as the Simmonses, Nicola King as Phillipa Haymes, Elaine Ives-Cameron as Hannah, Ralph Michael and Sylvia Syms as the Easterbrooks and Matthew Solon as Edmund Swettenham. The cast is a proper village assortment: two women at the heart of the household, a young couple, a retired colonel and his wife, and the neighbours who came to watch.

A murder announced in advance is a dare, and the village took it up. By the end of part one the dare has its first casualty, and Craddock has his first headache.