The world between them

I’m re-reading Murder Is Easy before the release of this feature-length BBC version.

It could be a technically superb movie and still disappoint. It’ll almost surely give Christie the Merchant-Ivory treatment, which is wrong for her.

The recent adaptations don’t capture Christie’s spareness. No matter how faithfully they render the plot and characters, they make the scenery and costumes too pretty. They embellish what the page (wisely) barely sketches.

Perhaps if Mike Leigh were the director …

If only Nicolas Roeg had adapted one or two of the creepier Christie novels, as he did The Witches and Don’t Look Now …

As T.S. Eliot famously said: “Christie and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”

(OK, he said Dante and Shakespeare, but that wasn’t what he meant.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Shakespeare-wise, I have begun reading Coriolanus. How timeless these plebians and politicians seem!

Daniel, this week, decided to say dozens of real words. Previously, he had spoken gibberish.