The Traitors, The Traitors, and Miss Marple
The murder-based things keeping me pleasantly occupied lately
Hello everyone!
Let’s get to it.
Things 1 and 2: The Traitors, season 2 (UK and US)
I have written before in this newsletter about my love for the international reality competition show franchise, The Traitors. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a TV show version of the card game Mafia or Werewolf, where 2-4 people in a larger group are secretly traitors who “murder” (eg, kick out) another player every night and the faithful contestants have to guess whodunnit.
But in the TV version, this involves cloaks, poisoned chalices, a soundtrack of (possibly AI generated) songs with lyrics like “there’s a traitor in my heart, oooh”, a funeral parade in which three contestants are put in coffins and one is buried alive, meetings in the Traitor Turret, the secret reveal two contestants are mother-and-son, and, Alan Cumming AND Claudia Winkleman in the most ASTONISHING Scottish highland fashions.
It is great. I am loving it. Season 2 of the US one includes only celebrities/reality TV stars (and, inexplicably, the former speaker of the British House of Commons), while Season 2 of the UK one includes only normal non-famous people. This is the best way of doing this show, in my opinion. Versions that combined reality TV veterans with normal people always end in heartbreak (Traitors Canada s1, Traitors US s1) because normal people are not prepared for this level of mindgames, and reality TV veterans are utterly ruthless.
You can watch these seasons on Crave TV in Canada, where I just spotted the full series of The Traitors: New Zealand is also there?? Cloaks and secret murders with adorable accents set in the landscape of the LOTR movies? GIVE IT TO ME
Thing 3: Miss Marple
So I know that my personal brand lately has been “that young crone who loves Agatha Christie books, Columbo, Murder She Wrote, The Traitors, and seemingly nothing else” and that is true. But also, I am a latecomer to the works of Dame Christie, and have been dutifully reading them all for the first time over the past few years.
Hercule Poirit is flashier, and the standalones can be really fun, which has meant it took until now for me to delve into the Miss Marple of it all. And can I say: she may be my fav.1
There are eleven official Marple books (not including various short stories) and so far this month, I’ve read nine of them. It’s fascinating to me that in around half of what I’ve read, Jane Marple (for that is her name) is barely in the books — she pops up at the end Deus Ex Marple to help the silly amateur sleuths sort out whatever mystery they’ve been ineptly working at for the whole book.
Before reading these books, I did watch several of the 1980s Miss Marple made for TV movies, as well as nearly all of the early 2000s Marple made for TV movies (featuring a variety of pre-fame early 2000s people as well as Hannah from S Club 72 as a hotel maid who gets murdered). And I didn’t truly love these films, partly because of how the 2000s one really goes out of its way to shoehorn in unnecessary heterosexual romances, with episodes ending with Jane nodding approvingly as though she’s some sort of elderly Cupid who gives a shit about the love lives of various twits. The 2000s series also dares to give Jane backstory as a nurse in WWI who had an affair with a married man??? When the books very clearly give no romantic past or backstory at all to Jane Marple, a woman who is clearly either asexual or lesbian, but very much not someone who had a trashy “other woman” phase during WWI.
The 1980s films also have some of the most appalling wigs I’ve ever seen on 1970s or 80s British television, and as a person who has seen all of I Claudius and much of thie era of Doctor Who I hope you know that’s saying something.
Basically, if you’re thinking of giving Marple a try, I recommend the books. Once I’ve read all eleven I can give a definitive ranking. At the moment, I’m really vibing with 4:50 From Paddington, A Caribbean Mystery, and Nemesis.
You may notice I haven’t mentioned the new Mandy Patinkin-starring murder mystery TV series Death and Other Details, a series about a murder on a cruise ship that you’d think I would love. I, too, expected to love it. So far, I have not. If they let Mandy sing, though, it may just win me over yet.
xoxo
Ann
not true; Lucy Eyelesbarrow, aka murder-solving Mary Poppins, from 4:50 To Paddington is my true fav
she’s in At Bertram’s Hotel, with fellow 2000s starlet Martine McCutcheon of Love Actually fame