User Reviews

This apparently loose adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's relatively obscure novels is one of this TV series' best entries, and one of the few that can rival in intricacy and complexity even the best Hercule Poirot stories. There are lots of little details that are designed to delight mystery fans (the light in the window, the smoke from the chimney, the gunshot, the coded message, the handwriting, 11:45 sharp, etc.) - the script is clearly written by someone who both loves and understands the genre (he also wrote Julia McKenzie's best Season 4 Marple outing, "They Do It With Mirrors"). Everything seems inexplicable at the start, yet (nearly) everything is logically explained by the end. The director achieves some beautiful photographic effects, and the settings are magnificent. This episode also has arguably the best Inspector of the entire series; a man with a fearsome reputation who nonetheless knows all about Miss Marple's own reputation and treats her as a useful equal from the start. It's nice to see Edward Fox in yet another Agatha Christie film (after "The Mirror Crack'd" and "The Hollow"), though my favorite cast member is without a doubt Dervla Kirwan, who radiates intelligence and sophisticated beauty. Unlike the men in the film, I would ask her to marry me and not her sister - I prefer brunettes anyway! *** out of 4.

The Secret of Chimneys had an intriguing start for sure to keep me intrigued for sure. But the twists and turns that would make an Olympian gymnast envious was one that I felt was way too contrived really for sure.

Mathew Horne as Eversleigh made for good fun, and Adam Godley (who was in Suits) was dastardly as Lomax. Charlotte Salt as Virginia made the best of a role in The Secret of Chimneys. Anyway (being envious of people who wrote their reviews before the minimum word count) I was quite admiring of the gardens and the hard work put into maintaining it for filming The Secret of Chimneys init.

"Rich young things running around in grand English gardens."

So it should be. Instead what have we: "Dear old Miss Marple running around in tunnels in grand English country estates, holding a big torch like a true CSI."

But let me start with the beginning, and not so fast. I love Agatha Christie, I do, and have read most of her books. Not all of these have the quality of "Five little Pigs", "Sad Cypress" (Both very well adapted for television with David Suchet), "Towards Zero", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Then there was None" and "Death comes as the End". But they all are unmistakably works of Agatha Christie, and she never put her main characters in the wrong place. Unlike the people responsible for the new "Marple" production. They are busy being much better at this game than Agatha herself, so they edit and rewrite her stories to put things right, don't they?

Alright, first there was this book, "The Secret of Chimneys". Agatha Christie wrote it in 1924/25, and here she is in Wodehouse territory, sort of. You half expect Bertie Wooster to turn up in the garden in the middle of all the muddle. We have Chimneys, the old country manor, known for its noble and famous guests during the centuries. Chimneys is also the home of the lovable Marquis of Caterham, a witty gentleman who detest politics and pompous politicians, and therefore have a close friend named George Lomax who is a pompous politician, a Foreign Office man. And there's the high spirited young Bundle, the eldest daughter of Lord Caterham, her name is actually Lady Eileen Brent. We have Bill Eversleigh, personal assistant of George Lomax, a cricket and party at the Savoy man. Then there's the beautiful young widow and our heroine, the Honorable Mrs Virginia Revel. Every man of course wants to marry her but she prefer to be the happy widow. Then there's the stranger coming home after years in Africa, the mysterious but well behaved Anthony Cade. There's a rich American, a clever French policeman, a notorious criminal called King Victor, there's the odd Mr. Fish who collects first editions but takes no interest in the books he is shown at Chimneys, a French governess, a dead Prince, a live Baron of the make believe country Herzoslovakia. There's a mysterious gang of Herzoslovakian rebellions. Not to mention a stolen diamond hidden somewhere at Chimneys. Into this scene walks Inspector Battle, the stoic man in the right place. He and only he shall restore order and peace.

The book is really fun nonsense, a good read to cheer you up. It's so playful, so silly that it 's meant to be the playground for these hyperactive young people: Bundle, Bill, Anthony and Virginia.

Then, there's the adaptation for television. How could they? John Strickland and Paul Rutman made it into a Miss Marple story! It's not enough for them to ruin the actual Miss Marple stories, they have to write her into stories that even a child knows is the wrong place for this character. Miss Marple probably never moved in circles as Chimneys anyway. Miss Marple is an old English gentlewoman living in a small village, and don't run around manor gardens and parks with Earls and Princes.

And what did Strickland/Rutman do to the characters from the book:

Lord Caterham. Not a charming, witty man anymore, but a bitter man in grief over his dead wife. And it gets much much worse ...

Bundle. Not a joyful, energetic adventuress anymore, but a bitter grown woman, calling herself an old spinster. A bit of a tomboy. Maybe we here have the unavoidable homosexual in these adaptations.

Virginia Revel. In this mess she is the second daughter of Lord Caterham and Bundle's sister. Why? For no reason other than change, change, change anything Mrs Christie once wrote.

Bill is more or less the man from the book, but since the story is completely changed, everything Bill does is also different.

George Lomax. Such potential from the character Christie created, and all the Strickruts could do with him was make him a whimsical, stiff and boring person.

Anthony Cade. Quite wrong. In the book he is cunning, clever, always two steps ahead, and it comes as no surprise in the end of the book, that he actually is a Prince in disguise and heir to the throne of Herzegovina. In the adaptation he is just a young man in love in a desperate situation, who needs Miss Marple to prove his innocence.

Most of the other characters are missing in the adaptation, and all the fun is gone with them. John Strickland and Paul Rutman finally hit the rock bottom they've been aiming for a long time when they decided to make the lovely Lord Caterham the murderer. Why? For no reason other than change, change, change. It can't be much worse than this. Oh, they can decide to make Miss Marple a man in a woman's body. Why not? Everything Agatha Christie created lacked something to make it really clever, so let's make some changes!

"The Secret of Chimneys" as a novel involves quite a lot of plot lines, but it doesn't involve Miss Marple.

This TV adaptation discards almost all the original plot lines (a tiny, and inconsistent stub of one remains) and puts just formulaic nonsense in their place. Miss Marple is completely out of character - she would *never* have gone to stay at Chimneys - and the whole idea of including her is just silly.

The worst bit of all is a pointless character from "National Heritage" (or is it "The English Trust"?) who is there for no reason at all and just spends her time being unpleasant to people.

The whole thing is the most appalling display of arrogance on the part of the screenwriters. They take what was quite a good story, and failing to realise their own incompetence, "improve" it to the point where nothing good remains and it's just trite rubbish.

Once again, the producers have royally messed with a decent Agatha Christie novel. Instead of saying "Based on the novel by Agatha Christie," the credits should read "Loosely adapted from the novel by Agatha Christie." One of the previous reviewers covered the plot well enough, so I'll just say that the only similarities between the book and this adaptation are the names of the characters (even their relationships aren't the same) and the name of the home where the story takes place. The writers have written an entirely different plot that is very much NOT an improvement on the Agatha Christie story or her characters AND they throw Miss Marple into it. I gave this two stars rather than 1 because the acting's decent.

Novels and films (and television series) are obviously all very different animals. In the past, when the Christie adaptations were good, the writer(s) would take some small liberties to help elucidate back story, or because they wanted to include Hastings, or Miss Marple's nephew Raymond or some other character they thought would help with the plot. Now the trend seems to be to completely rewrite Christie's plots to appeal to a modern audience. I don't know about you, but part of the reason I enjoy reading Christie and watching the good adaptations (not this dreck)is because I enjoy the time/place-specific plots of the stories. PLEASE STOP MESSING WITH THEM.

I have never read "The Secret of Chimneys", but from the other reviews here, I think I can get the picture. Even without the advance knowledge there seems to be something off in this adaptation; some sort of over-simplifying that I don't like. There's the underline for a fun frisky romp and then it is barraged with more "mature", but rather corny clichés from a lot of these Marple adaptations. The dreaded illegitimate child cliché rears it's ugly head again, and the poisoning everyone a little bit, but only one person completely over dinner is ripped straight out of "4:50 from Padington" (probably one of the best ITV Marples). Still there things to like. I enjoy Julia McKenzie as Marple, same way I did Geraldine McEwan, and there are some pretty good players in the supporting cast as well. Stephen Dillane (who was brilliantly unlikable in Game of Thrones) makes for one of the more engaging detectives in the series (as one other reviewer said, he could have carried this thing on his own). Charlotte Salt was also quite charming as Virginia Revel. I just couldn't make up my mind about Edward Fox though. Sometimes he's above what's going on, sometimes he isn't. It was sadly very obvious that he was the murderer. I realize they were trying to make us like him, but we already knew. I also felt very sad about both of the victims (The Count and Ms. Treadwell), but then the film decided to settle for gallingly happy again. I know that Christie had a range for comedy and tragedy, and some of the adaptations have done both brilliantly, but here you have both and either is well executed. If it is worth seeing than for the actors.

The Marple series had touched the bottom with Sittaford Mystery, as Suchet had met with Appointment his major disaster,but The Secret Of Chimneys is a good rival for the infamous Worst Christie Award,the Oscar given by outraged viewers to the worst adaptation of our dear Agatha's work.Gosh,what an awful jumble of musical codes,murdered maids and,again,illegitimate children (as I had atrociously suspected, they have again inserted this stilted and very melodramatic cliché another time.I think it's now the mark or the signature of the two beloved TV series,any Poirot or Marple must have now a couple or two of illegitimate children in the final solution,usually absurdly related to other characters but not related at all with the novel they are supposed to adapt.).What a disaster!Edward Fox was a great Caterham,Dillane was a great inspector,the direction was not so bad,with the clever, swift passages from flashback to reality,but the story became swiftly a nightmare of silly tricks and clumsy coincidences,with a solution exceedingly easy to solve from the too crystal-clear prologue,even if it was desperately cloaked after with a very thick fog of convoluted and quite pointless red-herrings.Certainly Chimneys was a very bad choice,it's a light Wodehousian romp,highly amusing in itself and far more adequate to the old LWT.Pat Sandys would have transformed it in a little gem ,but now the Wodehouse touch is apparently disappeared from England ,and the story was instead transformed in an old and musty melodrama with a spread of modern "merriment" that even Conan Doyle would have found quite stale.The fact that part of the solution was based on Christie's Herb of Death (poor little Chimneys had quite nothing to do with this Irish Stew)can't be a liniment to our disappointment.I like very much the Marple series,I have found the McEwan age enchanting and highly poetical.Julia McKenzie had some very good scripts in Mirror and Mirrors,and even Rye was quite adequate,particularly in the second half.The first half of Evans was quite joyful,before an untimely degeneration. I accept Marple in other sleuths' cases,it could be very interesting,as Zero or Ordeal had wisely demonstrated.I can accept changes and some modernization (particularly if they can serve to dig in the inner psychology of some character).But the story must be the same.You can't adapt Oliver Twist telling the escape from Alcatraz of a young Russian spy,ruthlessly shadowed by Detectives Sikes and Fagin of FBI.It would be a Twist that even Oliver would not accept.So,you can't tell us that SPOILER

the Secret of Chimneys is the story of a philandering Austrian count murdered by a cuckolded husband unfortunately married to one of the lusty Marple women (apparently, they were the Hilton sisters of the 20s,always involved in adultery and wild parties.Next time old Jane will confess to having smoked hemp in a Rhodesian rugby stadium with the bishop of Ely,in her very fast youth.) No,if Marple want to keep her passionate followers must restrain herself quite a bit.People thinking that the change of actress could be a change of direction towards a serious and Taliban purism have now understood that the series was instead pushed towards even more substantial and obnoxious changes. Geraldine McEwan was never involved in such a big lot of unfaithful plots.She was very maligned but she had only Sittaford ,when Julia McKenzie has on her conscience Evans,Chimneys and Easy.I strongly advice Chorion to stick to more psychological plots as Caribbean or Sparkling Cyanide or Crooked House instead of dedicate themselves to lighter stories they can't adapt with the adequate fidelity or panache.If you don't like them,please,don't destroy them. Personally,I'm quite afraid to see what they can do with Man in Brown Suit or Seven Dials ,and even with Black Coffee or the Big Four,because, alas ,even Suchet has never been immune to awful changes (the real mistake was Easy,it was a very strong novel with a very sound plot and an highly original solution,why change it so much?)I don't want be too harsh against Paul Rutman, it was not totally his fault,he wrote with Mirrors the better Julia's Marple until now,but perhaps Kevin Elyot and Stewart Harcourt understand better Christie World,and they could be let with the total burden of the series on their skillful shoulders.Mark Gatiss could have made a miracle with Chimneys,it's quite a Lucifer Box plot.Rutman was simply very far from the mark,as Patrick Barlow was not at all at ease with Evans.But please,please,change something but not everything.People would like to can recognize the novel they are watching on the telly,it isn't?