The first instalment of the two part BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy was watched by 3.6 million viewers, but the BBC couldn’t retain those viewers and the second instalment was down 800,000 BBC viewers from the first instalment. There was a time that the BBC’s Agatha Christie adaptations could pull 5 million viewers, but that was before the BBC went full woke.
In Christie’s novel Luke Fitzwilliam is a retired English policeman and understudy of Hercule Poirot, who returns from where he was stationed in India. He shares a London-bound train carriage with Lavinia Pinkerton who tells him of her intention to report a serial killer in her village to Scotland Yard and also tells him who was killed and who will be killed next. The next day he Lavinia Pinkerton’s death, and then about of the death of Dr Humbleby, who’s coming death Pinkerton told Fitzwilliam about on the train. Fitzwilliam decides to go to Pinkerton’s village to investigate.
That was before the BBC got hold of it and went full woke with its adaption. The adaptation was written by actress and producer Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre, which is already a massive red flag considering her proclivity for “social-justice” issues.
The by now overdone and cliched BBC woke race swap ploy turns this classic Agatha Christie crime story into a social justice sermon. In Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre’s re imagining of the classic murder mystery Luke Fitzwilliam (portrayed by actor David Jonsson) is no longer an English police officer, but a Nigerian attaché travelling to the United Kingdom to take up a position at Whitehall. Ejiwunmi-Le Berre’s adapted Murder is Easy doesn’t hold back the punches as it preaches on issues of race, feminism and class.
And of course there has to be a woman, Bridget Conway (portrayed by Morfydd Clark), to save the day with her super duper observation skills, without which our diplomat turned sleuth Fitzwilliam never would have tracked down the killer. So stunning and brave.
One top critic at Rotten Tomatoes, Melanie McDonagh from The Standard (UK) writes: “It’s hard to take the novel seriously, and it’s impossible to take this silly, self-aggrandising, preposterous adaptation at its own estimation. Give it a miss.”
Top Critic Anita Singh from the Daily Telegraph (UK) writes: “Jonsson does his best despite the direction, which mostly consists of him being told to stare enigmatically at people or the middle distance.”
The massive drop in viewership, a low critics score of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5,5/10 rating on IMDB proves that BBC’s viewership is suffering from wokeness fatigue.
Will BBC ever learn to never go full woke?
Not until their UK tax paying licences get cut off.
They can’t even pay off their shills anymore. Sad!
Agreed