After last year's success of the adaptation "And then there were none" the BBC have returned to another equally bleak story with menacing overtones from Agatha Christie. The Witness for the Prosecution is 120 minutes long rather than 180 minutes like last year though. Gone now are the days of an old fashioned jolly good fun whodunit.
The premise begins with a rich widow who enjoys seducing younger men finds herself rather nastily knocked off, just like a game of Cluedo it looks like it was the candlestick in the lounge. The prime suspect in the case is her latest lover, perhaps he snapped after being treated like a pet or did he become enraged after she allegedly tried to end the relationship? To make things worse a witness claims she can place him leaving the murder scene moments before the body is discovered. Things ought to be okay for him though, after all he does have an alibi....
Other suspects in the story include a resentful maid and possibly even the young man's jealous "wife" who maybe killed her and then allowed her cheating partner to take the blame. Or did the two of them plan the murder together in order to get her money and now the wife has double crossed him? Or will we find out the dead lady had a string of jealous ex lovers, any of whom might have come back for vengeance? Personally I think it was the cat.
Our protagonist (a solicitor) is played by Toby Jones (That chap who's in everything, including a recent adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express.) We don't meet him until were about 30 minutes into the story, he's the one character we have who comes off as unquestionably genuine and caring, his home life is rather tragic and to say the least he has some health problems also.
The cinematography is worth mentioning too. Nearly everything is filmed with a horrible greeny/yellow tint, perhaps designed to emphasize the sickness and despair for many of those who'd experienced the Great War. Levels of detail in the picture are also very soft and often hazy, again deliberately I'm sure, as if a fog of confusion has descended over a world where things were once so clear cut and well defined. Personally I did find it a bit distracting at times. The smog finally lifts near the end as things become clearer and the truth is revealed.
Don't go into this hoping for a simple Miss Marple structured story with 6 or 7 suspects, all equally shifty and up to no good and lots of clues lying about for our charming investigator to stumble upon. The Witness for the Prosecution is more an intense study of the horrors of war and it's effects on the living. At it's bottom the story is about evil, deception, tragedy, guilt and the futility of life. Perhaps with 2016 being such a year of unpleasant shocks, divisions, upheaval and unrest the BBC decided to release an adaptation which would match the public mood...
