Agatha Christie is British heritage: an essential figure in its cultural imagination, both for her published work and her influence on the murder genre and the volume of audiovisual adaptations that she has generated in the last century. The first film adaptation was in 1928, The passing of Mr Quin, which translated a short story. It was inevitable that this moment would come: that a black, British screenwriter like Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre, trained at Oxford, would look for a way to expand the source material to include a racial perspective.
In Killing is Easy, which is based on the novel of the same name published in 1939 and can be seen on Movistar Plus, the action is moved to 1954 and the profile of Luke Fitzwilliam, the protagonist who must solve a series of murders, is changed. Instead of being a retired Scotland Yard detective, Fitzwilliam is a young Nigerian (David Jonsson, seen in the fantastic Industry) who arrives in England with the promise of a good job in Whitehall, under the command of his superior in Africa, at which he holds in high esteem.
On the way to his new position, he meets the endearing Mrs. Pinkerton (Downton Abbey’s Penelope Wilton), who is convinced that a local person is masking a series of murders as accidents. Before reaching Scotland Yard, Mrs. Pinkerton is run over, and Fitzwilliam detours to Wychwood-Under-Ashe, the town where one neighbor after another dies. He thus enters a community that, if it already reserves friendly but distrustful glances towards strangers, is even more suspicious of a man like Fitzwilliam.
In Killing is Easy, there are hints of this racial dimension, especially from the exchange of opinions that the protagonist has with other black colleagues who have been in British society for longer and who remind him that, no matter how kind his superior was to He, Fitzwilliam is the fruit of colonialism.
It is interesting how David Jonsson handles himself in Wychwood-Under-Ashe: he has the bearing and education that is expected of an Agatha Christie detective and, at the same time, the fresh look of a man who meets the educational standards of the era but, due to a melanin issue, it is treated with reservations. Bridget Conway (Morfydd Clark) also contributes her perspective, an attractive neighbor who, aware of the limitations of a woman of that time and her social class, feels that she must accept the courtship of the businessman who cuts the cod.
That Wychwood-Under-Ashe has an almost dystopian quality with the direction that emphasizes the green of the grass, the often fake friendliness, an almost disturbing tranquility in the streets and that convenient conviction on the part of the authorities and local elites that there absolutely nothing strange happens. It is normal, according to them, for neighbors to drop like flies: now one drowned in a puddle, now another who fell while cleaning windows and now another who drank her hair dye by mistake.
However, Killing is Easy never overcomes its status as a minor adaptation. The racial touches are diluted as the corpses pile up and the characters only work to the extent that they emerge as potential suspects or stiffs. A plot with social potential is also hinted at: the consolidation of a model of urban planning and real estate speculation that is indirectly designed to keep the working class isolated and poor.
When we reach the end of the two episodes, nothing remains clear with a production that indicates at all times that the BBC and Britbox, which are behind the project, do not see it as a particularly ambitious bet. It is content with being a happy place for Agatha Christie fans: it has the elegant detective, it has some outstanding supporting roles (that Penelope Wilton who disappears too soon), it has a harmless sense of violence and it has that very recognizable structure with its gallery of suspects .
