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Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
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Anyone watch the three-part adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? over the Bank Holiday. I enjoyed it. They didn’t muck around with the characters or plot too much (just a bit of consolidation and trimming for telly) and the leads were good, Lucy Boynton in particular. Well done ITV, watch and learn BBC.
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Really well cast and directed, but - as usual with just about every Agatha Christie adaptation I've ever watched - I just didn't understand the denouement. I heard who 'Evans' was, but as for the rest: no idea.
Christie always seems to rely on people not being who they purport to be, usually through a marriage name change (as in this one) which seems a swizz to me, as it couldn't reasonably be worked out by the viewer/reader. What about Knox's ten 'rules' of fairness of the writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction:
1 The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
2 All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3 Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4 No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5 No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6 No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7 The detective himself must not commit the crime.
8 The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
9 The "sidekick" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10 Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
Christie always seems to rely on people not being who they purport to be, usually through a marriage name change (as in this one) which seems a swizz to me, as it couldn't reasonably be worked out by the viewer/reader. What about Knox's ten 'rules' of fairness of the writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction:
1 The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
2 All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3 Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4 No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5 No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6 No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7 The detective himself must not commit the crime.
8 The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
9 The "sidekick" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10 Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
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