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cimoreneThe thing about the changes made in the new miniseries of The Seven Dials Mystery is that they seem motivated by a couple of motives that strike me as unwise and illegitimate:
You see what I'm saying?
Not everything has to be funny, but this is a book with a strong strain of comedy that was pretty much excised, although there are weak attempts to keep a couple of the jokes in a thin, watered-down, much briefer form. Why is Socks allowed to humorously be addicted to the word 'subtle' but Lady Coote isn't allowed to be lugubrious?
I can vividly imagine the screenwriting argument that the POV character's connection to the crime should be stronger, and that on the plus side, switching her love interest to a dead guy will leave her book love interest to be gay. Sure, removing the pastede-on side romance from an Agatha Christie is almost always a plus, but I simply don't buy the dead boyfriend addition. She didn't need a dead boyfriend! We also didn't need to flash back to WWI, which is the only other thing the dead boyfriend facilitated (because besides being her boyfriend, she still needed ANOTHER motive to investigate his murder, aside from disliking people to be murdered in her bedroom, so it turns out he was the bff who bodily carried her dying brother - invented for the screen - out of a trench). I suppose people were thinking that viewers would be confused about the time period and forget that WWI was only a few years ago, but counterpoint: they explicitly bring it up several other times in the script besides the repetitive discussions of her invented brother's death and dead boyfriend's shellshock.
Apart from the heroine, Bundle, and the murder victim's spunky sister, Loraine, the book features another significant female character, one with a role in the espionage - a Hungarian countess, femme fatale, deadly enemy spy who turns out to have been working on the side of good all the time and also to be a popular actress of Jewish descent. This is... HIGHLY RELEVANT to the plot and themes of the mystery??? Yet she's removed from the plot apparently for space, because the last third of book action and one whole setting is removed from the adaptation. That's no excuse though, not least because they were making such large changes already they might have moved her, but also because it's already a miniseries and it's not like they appeared to lack budget.
I can't actually say they reduced the number of female characters, because they replaced Bundle's widower father, a wholly comic character, with a widow mother who shares... some, one might say many, of his peculiarities, but in a way that is no longer really comic. In fact, it's sinister, and it has to be, because this is yet another Christie adaptation that has the gold-plated effrontery to change the bad guy.
The espionage and theft and murder are still committed by the same guy and his same accomplice, but instead of being one of the most clever and daring criminals out for his own selfish gain that Superintendent Battle has met, he's a slightly dumb catspaw... of Bundle's reclusive mother. Bundle's father was humorously hiding from callers, because he just wanted to be alone to potter around his house; but he was extremely polite and even effusively welcoming once he actually was face-to-face with them. Bundle's mother hides from callers and then is rude to them, and monologues about how she hates society and all the people in it, and therefore she enlists a random socialite to help her with an act of espionage to be sold internationally to the highest bidder so they can make money but also to Get Back At England because she resents that Bundle's invented brother died in WWI. This variety of "Women can be super villains too!" always strikes me as sexist and it so frequently falls flat, too. They wanted a woman to be a villain, and then they wanted her to have FEMALE MOTIVES, so she hates her country because of her obsession with her son - nevermind that stealing and selling state secrets for (a) money or (b) loyalty specifically to the other states involved are overwhelmingly the most common motives for that because they are the ones that make sense and they're also perfectly adequate. Was it not evil enough if she was motivated by money? Or did they think it was too evil? Or, no, are they trying to make like a symbolic extension of the evils of war - because see, the mothers can get PTSD too, and then they can become anti-patriotic, and before you know it, they're hiring socialites to steal military secrets, darn it. War is hell.
And when the Seven Dials is revealed as a Secret Society for GOOD and patriotic espionage run by Superintendent Battle, instead of learning that several guys she already knew are already in it as well as the femme fatale she thought she was working against (the book), in this new show she is the most speshulest girl because she's being invited specifically to fill the empty chair of HER FATHER, who was THE BEST AGENT, so good that nobody could ever replace him, and he died years ago on a mission for them, but now she's clearly just like him but also EVEN MORE TALENTED. Bundle Skywalker, you will rebuild the Seven Dials...! Or something.
- to make a rollicking comedy-adventure-farce way more serious and solemn and sad
- to make sure the main heroine is not motivated by spunk, excitement, or sheer desire to solve crimes, but by revenge for the man she loooooooooved
- to make the heroine just the MOST speshul, not because of what she achieves or her choices and actions, but because of who she innately is
You see what I'm saying?
Not everything has to be funny, but this is a book with a strong strain of comedy that was pretty much excised, although there are weak attempts to keep a couple of the jokes in a thin, watered-down, much briefer form. Why is Socks allowed to humorously be addicted to the word 'subtle' but Lady Coote isn't allowed to be lugubrious?
I can vividly imagine the screenwriting argument that the POV character's connection to the crime should be stronger, and that on the plus side, switching her love interest to a dead guy will leave her book love interest to be gay. Sure, removing the pastede-on side romance from an Agatha Christie is almost always a plus, but I simply don't buy the dead boyfriend addition. She didn't need a dead boyfriend! We also didn't need to flash back to WWI, which is the only other thing the dead boyfriend facilitated (because besides being her boyfriend, she still needed ANOTHER motive to investigate his murder, aside from disliking people to be murdered in her bedroom, so it turns out he was the bff who bodily carried her dying brother - invented for the screen - out of a trench). I suppose people were thinking that viewers would be confused about the time period and forget that WWI was only a few years ago, but counterpoint: they explicitly bring it up several other times in the script besides the repetitive discussions of her invented brother's death and dead boyfriend's shellshock.
Apart from the heroine, Bundle, and the murder victim's spunky sister, Loraine, the book features another significant female character, one with a role in the espionage - a Hungarian countess, femme fatale, deadly enemy spy who turns out to have been working on the side of good all the time and also to be a popular actress of Jewish descent. This is... HIGHLY RELEVANT to the plot and themes of the mystery??? Yet she's removed from the plot apparently for space, because the last third of book action and one whole setting is removed from the adaptation. That's no excuse though, not least because they were making such large changes already they might have moved her, but also because it's already a miniseries and it's not like they appeared to lack budget.
I can't actually say they reduced the number of female characters, because they replaced Bundle's widower father, a wholly comic character, with a widow mother who shares... some, one might say many, of his peculiarities, but in a way that is no longer really comic. In fact, it's sinister, and it has to be, because this is yet another Christie adaptation that has the gold-plated effrontery to change the bad guy.
The espionage and theft and murder are still committed by the same guy and his same accomplice, but instead of being one of the most clever and daring criminals out for his own selfish gain that Superintendent Battle has met, he's a slightly dumb catspaw... of Bundle's reclusive mother. Bundle's father was humorously hiding from callers, because he just wanted to be alone to potter around his house; but he was extremely polite and even effusively welcoming once he actually was face-to-face with them. Bundle's mother hides from callers and then is rude to them, and monologues about how she hates society and all the people in it, and therefore she enlists a random socialite to help her with an act of espionage to be sold internationally to the highest bidder so they can make money but also to Get Back At England because she resents that Bundle's invented brother died in WWI. This variety of "Women can be super villains too!" always strikes me as sexist and it so frequently falls flat, too. They wanted a woman to be a villain, and then they wanted her to have FEMALE MOTIVES, so she hates her country because of her obsession with her son - nevermind that stealing and selling state secrets for (a) money or (b) loyalty specifically to the other states involved are overwhelmingly the most common motives for that because they are the ones that make sense and they're also perfectly adequate. Was it not evil enough if she was motivated by money? Or did they think it was too evil? Or, no, are they trying to make like a symbolic extension of the evils of war - because see, the mothers can get PTSD too, and then they can become anti-patriotic, and before you know it, they're hiring socialites to steal military secrets, darn it. War is hell.
And when the Seven Dials is revealed as a Secret Society for GOOD and patriotic espionage run by Superintendent Battle, instead of learning that several guys she already knew are already in it as well as the femme fatale she thought she was working against (the book), in this new show she is the most speshulest girl because she's being invited specifically to fill the empty chair of HER FATHER, who was THE BEST AGENT, so good that nobody could ever replace him, and he died years ago on a mission for them, but now she's clearly just like him but also EVEN MORE TALENTED. Bundle Skywalker, you will rebuild the Seven Dials...! Or something.
