User reviews

Her fictional works are do much more interesting than this. I find her to be most annoying especially with her deliberate lack of sharing her thoughts, for 'dramatic effect'. Give me Ms Marple anytime.

... can't cover the tackiness and silliness swirling in by the minute.

Another contrived and pretentious mess.

Channel 5 make another original Agatha Christie mystery movie featuring Agatha Christie turned crime investigator. This way they do not have to deal with any copyright issues relating to Marple or Poirot.

Agatha Christie (Lyndsey Marshal) has divorced her husband and gone to an Iraqi archaeological site to seek inspiration to write romance stories.

Instead she finds love with a younger man. Max Mallowan (Jonah Hauer-King) an archaeological assistant is found by Christie after he is shot. The real life Mallowan actually ended up marrying Christie.

Christie also stumbles into murder then a monkey who has been poisoned and later found hanged.

Of course this could easily be a Poirot mystery. The desert, Babylonian artefacts being looted, a tablet containing a curse, an arrogant American tycoon and oodles of death, but that character is under copyright.

So Christie and Mallowan try to unearth the killer and also find time for some hanky panky. At times it comes across as Carry on Follow that Camel with a randy couple on the excavation site and some double entendres.

This looks more expensive than last year's Agatha and the Truth of Murder. It has been filmed in Malta. It was also more playful and lighter in tone in than the previous movie. I am not convinced that it actually made it a better film. I think Marshal fitted the part better than the previous actress.

Lyndsey Marshal has a history with Agatha Christie adaptations and I believe she was a good fit for the character of Agatha in this film. However the character itself was a bit too bland. Also the story was showing random people getting killed without telling us anything about them. Agatha's lack of emoting combined with the overall care free reaction to murder of just about everybody made the film feel implausible.

Now, the acting was decent for all, without it being stellar in any way, but it was really difficult to empathize with any of the characters or feel for the history or culture of Iraq. And to top it all off, they added the artificial character of Pearl, whose only reason for existence seemed to be being an educated and attractive Black young woman who had a few scenes to complain about not being taken seriously, then proceed to be irrelevant to the story.

Bottom line: the storytelling felt amateurish and failed to compel me in any way. Too bad, because the acting was good.

A very likeable fictional representation of how Agatha Christie met her second husband to be in the context of a murder investigation at a dig in Iraq.All the elements that make her mysteries such perennialy enjoyable readings are here in spades.A fine effort!!!

Very disappointed. Yet another relatively recent jumping on the band-wagon of using Agatha Christie's name to pull in audiences, only to either butcher the original story into oblivion so it is unrecognisable or using Agatha herself as the sleuth to avoid copyright issues with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot.

The sets were the only decent thing about the film.

The score was sometimes intrusive and jarring and did not enhance the mood the visual was trying to achieve, which was distracting.

Hauer-King's acting was rather wooden and his period accent not at all credible; in fact the film's 1920s vernacular was too modern in general - note to TOM DALTON - have you read any Agatha Christies, or books of that period? If you had, you would realise that people did not, for example, say things like "Call the police" or "Excuse me?" when Agatha was interrupted by the train guard speaking to her in Arabic? Most British people wouldn't use that Americanism, even today! If you don't want to do this, then set it in the present day.

I know it is only a TV film, but how on earth did it even get the green light to go into production and release, one wonders...?!

I couldn't help but think of the many Poirot movies set in the middle east. Those were imbued with sound, heat, mystery, etc. Of these exotic locations. Poirot always insistent on pursuing his british/belgium idiosyncrasies while trying to enjoy his "vacations " which was always interrupted by a wonderful murder. (See Death on the Nile).

This is the complete opposite. The first part of the movie focuses on christie trying to imbue her novels with "romance." She is encouraged by new friends to go to Iraq, and it is downhill from there. The Christie actress is bland, the murder of someone is not clear...apparently the monkey imbibed the poison.. The rest of the ensemble (except for young Max) is boring and unforgettable. Even the scenery is dusty and boring. There didn't seem to be any music or sound effects to heighten our attention to murders or significant scenes.

Watch the first of these Christie driven movies. The one that depicts Christie when she disappeared for a few weeks, made a couple of years back. That actress successfully depicted Agatha as a serious author, but with a lovely sparkle underneath. There is no sparkle here.

Penned by the same writer who wrote last year's surprise package Agatha and The Truth of Murders, but a different actress in the lead role. Lynsey Marshall steps in to replace Ruth Bradley, and does a fine job.

It's a very slick production, it looks great, it's well filmed, and very well written. It was a good old fashioned mystery. I love the way they penned a situation for Christie. Stunning location work.

It more then made up for the lack of Agatha Christie drama on the BBC this Christmas. If only this had been transmitted on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day.

Is this a trend? Will there be another one next year? On this evidence I hope so.

It has all the trappings of a pretty period drama, and it probably wasn't cheap to make, but the plot and the dialogue are absolute drivel. Jonah Hauer-King is a tasty piece of eye-candy but ogling him is the only pleasure to be had from wasting your time with this.

This was slow and plodding. It managed to make 95 minutes feel like 3 hours. The main actress playing Agatha lacked charisma and it had a bit of an amateur feel to it, although it was made as a TV movie. On the plus side, the production values were very good, so it was a shame that it wasn't a better script with a bit more drama and played less flat. This is probably the dullest Agatha Christie related movie that I have ever seen. At least the ones made in the 80s were entertaining.

This, the second story to imagine authoress Agatha Christie to be caught up in a murder mystery of her own, sees her travelling to Iraq to stay with friends at an archaeological dig. Before she gets there young archaeologist, Max, finds a body. This is put down to a snake bite but it soon becomes apparent that something is afoot. When Agatha arrives she finds Max injured by a bullet wound in the head and not long afterwards when she gets to the house where those involved in the dig are staying a pet monkey is found hanged! She thinks this is more than mere animal cruelty so, with the help of Max, performs an autopsy. The results make her certain that the dead man was killed something other than a snake. In the investigation that follows she grows close to Max while exposing a plot to steal artefacts and ultimately identifying the killer.

If you can get beyond the conceit of placing a real crime writer in a fictional murder mystery this rather fun. This fictionalised Agatha is a good protagonist and the mystery provides plenty of suspects. As well as the central mystery there is a degree of romance which doesn't distract from the main story. The thing that surprised me most about this production was the degree of humour; there were laughs from start to finish. These were unforced rather than obvious gags and added to my enjoyment. The cast is solid, most notably Lyndsey Marshal who is charming as Agatha and Jonah Hauer King, who plays Max. Obviously it couldn't be filmed in Iraq but the Maltese locations used have a suitably Middle Eastern look. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of classic murder mysteries.

It's hard to explain thoroughly what an utter mess this film is. The story is flimsy and hard to follow, and the actors seem to be asleep most of the time. Special opporobrium goes to the composer, who doled out a mish-mash of a score that ranges from Arvo Part-style minimalism, to weird processed piano doodling, to electronic noise. It's as though 3 or 4 different hacks each contributed a reel. The producer is a no-name whose only credits are three knock-off Agatha Christie mysteries. Who funded him? It's telling that he couldn't get the same actress to play the lead role in all three films. Shame on PBS for foisting this on a mystery-hungry public.

I expected some value out of an Agatha Christie movie but it was pure garbage. First the lead actress is dull , actually all the cast is made of boring people with no charisma. The plot initially promised a lot but it was just unrealistic and poor designed. The so called romance was a joke.

After tuning in to watch what I thought would be your usual Agatha Christie take, I was pleasantly surprised by something different that definitely stands out from the crowd.

Brilliantly directed by Sam Yates, the shots looked well thought out and added to the classier finish of production you don't tend to find on your evening foray threw the channels.

Part romance, part murder mystery, this film was absolutely worth my time and I thoroughly recommend it; by and large for the stellar performances by the cast, especially the leads in Lyndsey Marshal and Jonah Hauer King who harboured a wonderful chemistry throughout.

Expected more, more wit, more humour, more mystery.

I began to watch this after having thoroughly enjoyed "Agatha and the Midnight Murders" as it was similarly framed. However, the historical framing of this joyless, dour and decidedly postmodernist bunch of sadness is where the similarities end. One hopes that when producers use a famous author as the central character in a film billed as being similar in style to her works that the film would in fact have similar tone and personality. The producers of this film chose to betray the author's legacy by using it to pander to current cultural trends rather than give us an Agatha Christie style mystery. A great opportunity was lost. Thankfully, these great wrongs were corrected in the far superior "Midnight Murders" which I recommend viewing instead.

Take what you know of Agatha Christie as a person and add what you know of her works of fiction, then "let waters roll down like justice" to dilute, until there is nothing of Agatha Christie left. That seems to be the "receipt", as Miss Marple might put it, followed by the writer of Agatha and The Curse of Ishtar.

The weak humour is a dead giveaway that the writer lacks confidence in the story he's telling. The hotel receptionist infers that Mrs Christie is mute, because she draws a cross on a piece of paper to indicate her companion requires medical assistance (thinking that the receptionist wouldn't speak English). A woman who infers that Mrs Christie has been getting to know Max Mallowan in the biblical sense, asks how Mrs Christie found "the artefacts". You can see that this isn't going to be a profound work.

Like the earlier Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018), this had a running time of 2 hours on Channel 5 in the UK and was similarly far too frequently punctuated with adverts (commercial breaks). Very little of interest happened between the adverts.

I think it was an excellent performance and although plot was simple it made a great pre- Christmas treat.

Richard Case aka The Ghost Challenger

I am only 20 minutes into this title and I find it hard to believe that anyone could take the film seriously. Akin to an amateur dramatic show. Still, it takes all sorts but this was not for me. Sorry.

Jonah H-K... how does he get parts? Here he is, playing an extremely similar role to the one he had in World on Fire, i.e. a wet young upper-class Englishman in the 1920s-1940s. In neither role does he have a feeling for the period or an appropriate accent. Even if he were better, the script would still be anachronistic anyway. And Agatha herself is boring. It's also very slow. After a while I gave up and switched off.

Switched on full of enthusiasm, waiting for the usual Christie-quality production and it looked good inside the tomb: and then he said it... 'no one has STEP foot in here!' What the hell does that mean? There is no such expression; if he means 'no one has SET foot in here' then I could have continued watching but if the quality-control fails at this stage then, as they say, 'I'm out' so I switched off because the rest was going to lack credibility, too. If some numpty can't even get that right what chance does the rest of the production stand? What a shame.

What a beautifully made film. I can't recommend this enough. It's stylish and funny with great performances and a sense of scale and history. Lovely.

Dull and weirdly soulless. It's pure am dram. It looks as if it was put together on a scratch budget by a writer, crew and Director who aren't familiar with TV. Long winded scenes. Static dramatisation. Politically correct lines and dialogue and total lack of jeopardy. An empty vessel that plods from one set piece scene to another. The most boring numbskull imitation Christie ever contrived. The end credits state that it was not endorsed by the Agatha Christie estate. I bet is wasn't.