I loved Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz’s 2022 adaption of his novel of the same name, even if the proximity of its title to Midsomer Murders did have my domestic colleague openly laughing at me as I settled down to gorge on another episode, eager to know whether Atticus Pünd and Susan Ryeland could solve their respective cases, she in the present day and he in the 1950s. “No, it is NOT Midsomer Murders,” I would insist, crossly. “It is a superb and highly intricate homage to Golden Age crime fiction, written to appeal to more intelligent aficionados of the genre.” But it was no good. “You enjoy it,” he would reply indulgently, amused I’d developed this harmless but somewhat embarrassing new vice.
Anyway, I’m thrilled Horowitz has now adapted its sequel, Moonflower Murders: what a treat. Naturally, I worried I would miss nasty Alan Conway (Conleth Hill), the writer who created the fictional German detective, Atticus Pünd, who of course died in the last series. But, thanks to the fact that a lot of Moonflower Murders involves flashbacks, the excellent Hill appears once again, his fountain pen scratching away at the story within a story that’s central to the construction of Horowitz’s scheme. Tim McMullan also returns as Pünd, a refugee from Nazi Germany and the greatest detective in the world, as does Lesley Manville as Susan Ryeland, Conway’s delightfully liberated former editor (and the link between the two narratives). Basically, fellow fans, all is well. Prepare yourselves for bloodstains, Battenberg cake and – a true Kitemark, this – a star turn by Mark Gatiss.
When the series begins, Ryeland, who left publishing following a conflagration at the end of Magpie Murders, is in Crete with her boyfriend, Andreas (Alexandros Logothetis), where the two of them are failing to run a small hotel. Ryeland loved her old job – and the little red MG in which she used to zip about London – and she’s miserable. So when an English couple, the Trehernes (Pooky Quesnel and Adrian Rawlins) turn up and offer to pay her £10,000 if she’ll return to Blighty to help them find their missing daughter, she’s on the next flight to Gatwick faster than you can say taramasalata. Slightly improbably, the Trehernes, who run a country house hotel in Suffolk, believe Ryeland can help them because she edited the novel Cecily was reading before she disappeared – a novel, of course, by Alan Conway.
One of the huge pleasures of these series lies in the fact that, save for McMullan and Manville, the cast each play two roles, one in the real world and the other in Conway’s story. In this sense, it’s like watching high-class theatre; I love Daniel Mays especially as Locke/Chubb, both policemen, but very different from each other, one gentle and bumbling, the other stupidly pugnacious. Horovitz’s actors must, I think, relish his munificence when it comes to plot, the whole thing a lavish (but knowing) buffet – a heaving smorgasbord! – of detective-story Englishness. In Moonflower Murders, the killings occur in a pair of country-house hotels. We have old-fashioned movie stars (Rosalie Craig is Melissa James, a favourite of Alfred Hitchcock, and Cecily’s mean older sister, Lisa) and disinherited aristos, possibly-not-very faithful retainers and crooked financial advisers. Gatiss plays a desperate German film producer and a foul-tempered advertising executive, a pair of performances that may take you, gloriously, back to the days of The League of Gentlemen.
I reserve my true affection, however, for Ryeland, as played by Manville. How brilliant to see an older-woman character like this on TV: not only clever, ambitious and professional, but also at entirely at ease with herself. She has no children, and her relationship with Andreas is, at best, semi-detached, but no fuss is made about either of these things. Buzzing all over in her very non-green car, she’s someone I both recognise and aspire to be like. The part isn’t, I would say, particularly demanding for an actor with Manville’s talents, but she goes at it with a certain gusto. Yes, I’m sure she’s enjoying herself, but I choose to believe, too, that she understands that this role is, in its own way, a little bit important. In her character’s espadrilles and leather jacket is low-key televisual equality: a recognition that in the 21st century, 60 really is no age at all.
Moonflower Murders
BBC iPlayer
[See also: Bad Sisters returns, with a whiff of desperation]
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This article appears in the 20 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Combat Zone