TV 2022 : The Beast Must Die (2021)

[gervase_fen]

This five part drama keeps the premise of NIcholas Blake's 1938 novel, which is a terrific one - widowed Francis Cairnes, devastated by the unsolved  hit and run death of their only child, manages to trace the person responsible and infiltrates their household. Screenwriter Gaby Chiappe genderswaps the protagonist to stunning effect (Cush Jumbo as Frances is always in the moment and always convincing in her anger and pain). Her performance is matched scene for scene by Jared Harris as George Rattery, the man she targets, who is the embodiment of shrewdness and bullying charm. He is also (as in the book) smarter than the person targeting him.

There is a lot of ground up reinvention in updating the storyline from the 1930s to the 2020s, mainly centring on Blake's series detective Nigel Strangeways. Instead of the cultured, happily married, slightly dilettante figure from the novel, Billy Howles' DCI is a tortured loner barely masking PTSD following the death of a close colleague. At the same time Chiappe also relocates the action from Gloucestershire to the Isle of Wight (Strangeways transfers from the Met to the 'Vectis Police') which in a way shifts the setting back in time (a literally insular society).

This adaptation has clearly been taking some cues from Sarah Phelps' nihilist versions of Agatha Christie : the Rattery household is more dysfunctional, and one member of it more hateful, than I remember from the book. Directorial flourishes include ravishing drone shots of the coastline and a set piece encounter on a super yacht where every part of it could be used as a lethal weapon.  I wasn't too sure about the redressing of the police station as undergoing some sort of planned maintenance : this is a cue for sheets of hanging plastic, assorted noises off of drilling and hammering, and is either a metaphor for Strangeways' disassociated state of mind or an expedient measure to mask an absence of bustling police station extras which can't be shown due to COVID compliant filming.

Apparently this has been a hit for BritBox, and a non-Blake Strangeways is in pre-production.