The.

Hello and welcome to The Swinging Christies, the Christie Time podcast about Agatha Christie in the swinging 60s.

I'm Doctor Mark Aldridge.

I've written a lot about Agatha Christie, including my most recent book, Agatha Christie's Marple Expert on Wickedness.

Yes, and I'm Grey Robert Brown.

I'm a writer.

I'm a Christie fan.

I'm a indiophile.

Is that a thing?

Is that a word?

As in you really love India, Indian?

Culture and yeah, I've just always have.

I'm going to coin it.

If it's not a if it's not a phrase, I'm going to coin it.

Yeah, that's what we're doing this this episode, are we not?

Doctor Mark Aldridge.

Mark Aldridge.

Special episode Swinging India because we're going to be talking about 3 Indian adaptations of Agatha Christie, each with a link to the 1960s, so either made in that era or adapting one of the 60s titles.

And we're also going to be talking to friend of the podcast Ayesha Menon, who recently reimagined the mirror cracked for the Mumbai.

Stage, yes, and bizarrely so.

We'd already planned for quite some time to do this episode and then we've got Google Alerts set up for Agatha Christie's and Swinging 60s, which is how we keep abreast of all the all the news.

And just pinged up this morning that there's a new Hindi adaptation of The Mousetrap, which it says I'm getting this from the Tribune.

It's opening A2 day Theatre Festival to mark the conclusion of the month long National Theatre Workshop organised by the National School of Drama in India.

Yeah, a strange coincidence given that one of the adaptations, spoiler alert, we're going to be looking at is an adaptation of The Mousetrap.

But, but also we have both been to India fairly recently in the last couple of years.

So tell me about your travels.

That was 2023.

Yeah, it was.

So in the summer of 2023, towards the end of it, I had a message from Heather at the International Agatha Christie Festival to say that they were making arrangements with a another literary festival, the Derridon Literary Festival in India.

And that they had some sort of reciprocal agreement, you know, so that one makes an appearance at the other and and so on.

And that they were looking for somebody to send to to the festival that year.

An exchange student.

And I was an exchange student.

And so I did have to think about it a bit because obviously I really wanted to go to India, which I, I'd never even been to Asia before.

But also I only had like four days in my calendar.

I think I could have had longer if I'd wanted.

But I was teaching and I had all sorts of other stuff going on.

And so I was like, well, the only way I could do it would be if I flew out on Wednesday night and came back on the Sunday.

And bear in mind that Derridon is like 5 1/2 hours drive from Delhi where you come in.

So it's a hell of a thing.

But I thought, you know what?

I'll regret saying no more than I.

Do yeah.

How often do you get an opportunity like that?

I mean, that's incredible.

You know, I was in the foot of the Himalayas and it was lovely.

You know, meeting everybody and yeah, and that was the year or the year before maybe there was a big Indian TV adaptation of the city for mystery.

Yeah, because that was a bit in the Himalayas.

Yeah.

What we were discussing.

I see it's one of the things that was was was discussing yeah, we were discussing at the the talks yeah, yeah, that had just.

I think just launched then and it was a big deal because I didn't see it.

But you went then a few months later, didn't you?

Yes, I went in February 2024 and you did with my partner their.

Original own version.

Of the sort of film tie in version with it, yes, we did in I think yeah, in Kochi, I think so.

My partner is very much a citizen of the world and has literally been everywhere.

So it's quite hard to narrow down places that we can go.

And he's also got Indian heritage.

So his mum is from the Caribbean, but her ancestors were what they called indentured workers, which were brought from India to the Caribbean, to Trinidad, which is where she grew up.

So he'd he'd been to the Caribbean and he's been to where his dad's family are from, but he'd never been to India.

So it felt like, and I've always wanted to go, like I say, I've long been obsessed with, well, Indian novels mainly and Indian history.

But yeah, it was incredible.

So we went, we travelled, we were in Mumbai, we went down to Trivandrum and then across to Varkala in Kerala and then up to Alapuzzo houseboat, stunning and then for Kochi and then back to Mumbai.

And actually, I want to shout out, So Aisha is an old friend of mine.

I've known her a long time.

Not that she's old when she listens to this, she's going to kick me.

She's she already had a gobie for jokingly calling her auntie, didn't you?

Which I think I cut out the interview, actually.

But anyway, so we hung out with her sister Varushka and her husband, Sid.

Hi, Varushka.

And Sid, if you're listening, we want to see you again at some point soon.

But they absolutely plied us with cocktails just before our flight, our flight back.

But yes, they were lovely.

And Mumbai, I just thought was absolutely incredible in particular.

That's a really me place and it's the home of Bollywood, so very relevant to these adaptations we're going to talk about.

I also wanted to shout out two more friends of the podcast and two very respected and brilliant crime writers.

1 is Sukh Pannu and one is Vasim Khan, because we met both of them at the Christopher Christmas Harper Collins event in December and we mentioned that we were going to do this episode.

And both of them, they're sort of eyes litter.

And they both, yeah, they both write crimes, crime novels from the, they both commit crimes.

They both write crime novels from the, their kind of perspective of as people with, from the Indian diaspora.

And in both cases really worth a look.

So yeah, check them out.

Yeah, it's got lots to cover, haven't we?

So much to cover.

Let's crack on.

So we already spoke at length about the 1960s Agatha Christie's An Empire in episode 7, but there are a few points of context that are worth flagging up and reminding people about.

Yes.

So in 1947, which is about a decade just over before our time frame begins, the British partitioned India into India and what is now called Pakistan, leading to immense unrest, mass migration and bloodshed.

India and Pakistan both gained independence at that point.

And after that there were a number of wars, just general kind of conflict skirmishes between the two.

And most relevantly for us in this project was the 1965 Indo Pakistan conflict, which we mentioned in our archive episode when we were talking about Miss Perry and that and that was actually a chapter in the Cold War, as basically every skirmish in the 20th century was because the Soviet Union and the US were the ones that intervened to help bring about a ceasefire.

And actually I've just finished working on this book.

But the historian Vladislav Zubik points out that there there was also a fear around this time that this kind of British imperial withdrawing from places like India, but also Palestine, Greece, the Turkish Straits would potentially lead to chaos and open the gap for communism.

And actually he makes the very valid point that there's a reductive way of thinking about the Cold War.

That's just US and Soviet Union, and actually basically every country in the world was affected in this period, and India is no exception.

Then in 1961, there was the Annexation of Goa or the liberation of Goa, which was the annexing of the Portuguese Indian territories of Goa.

Demand and DU.

I should say thanks to Ayesha for helping us with our pronunciations throughout this episode.

Hopefully they're accurate.

Please let us know if not, and apologies if so.

But that's significant because this is the back story.

The Liberation of Goa is the back story that's given to the Heather Badcock character in Aisha's version of the Mirror Cracked, which we'll be discussing later in the episode.

Yeah, there's also in terms of the diaspora, there are many more Indians in Britain prior to the restrictions of the Commonwealth and Immigrants Act, which was passed in 1962.

I'm getting this from Sandbrook.

Take a drink.

Really, it's been episodes.

It's been a while, hasn't it?

It's been a while.

According to Steve Nicholson, the 60s was the decade in which we saw Indian Curry houses popping up in the UK in a big way.

So yeah, it's a cultural exchange for sure.

At this time we also spoke about Indian, specifically Buddhist and Hindu spiritualist ideas being popularised in the UK via The Beatles and the kind of amphetamines craze in the 60s.

And that was in our drugs episode and episode 6.

And in terms of Agatha Christie's personal context, we know she loved to travel.

We know that she went to all sorts of places around the world, whether they were, you know, set up for tourists or somewhere that she exciting that she wanted to go to.

And in 1960, she did travel to India, which you've mentioned before.

We may well come back to.

In Janet Morgan's biography, she says that early 1960 Max and Agatha set off to India, Pakistan and Persia, now Iran, going first to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, for a short holiday with Rosalind, Anthony and Matthew.

Delicious bathing, nice quantity of ruins of Max and some lovely mountain scenery, Agatha wrote to Edmund Corker, agent.

She did not, however, manage to retain her anonymity.

Two rude photographers attempting to photograph me bathing where I think foiled by Rosalind and Matthew rushing between me on either side.

I hope successfully.

Oh, as it was a particularly ungainly attitude I was in at that moment, practically a close up of a big behind.

I'll think about that a lot.

Particularly ungainly attitude.

Morgan also says that the Colombo Times described Agatha as a warm hearted woman, unspoilt by fame.

But thank goodness Agatha wrote to Cork Girlish, Actually Carefree from Mumbai fame, hasn't caught up with me here.

Max was amazed that Agatha survived the trip.

Does summer quite a big trip.

We travelled about 3000 miles right up to the Khyber Pass, looking at digs and museums and taking part in festive parties which were even more stuffed with ideas and with food.

Apparently, Max said Agatha is very widely read in Pakistan for.

At the most obscure places, we had fans jumping on the train and hammering at the cabin doors to get a signature Agatha mania.

This sounds like everyone incredibly friendly, but any possible trance of privacy on our travels seems to have vanished.

And then in late February, they flew from Kathmandu to Iran, where Agatha was apparently besieged again at the Park Hotel in Tehran, where 7 photographers congregated in the passage outside her bedroom door.

So that's absolutely I was flown out to India for a reason, right?

There's a reason why a literary festival would be interested in Agatha Christie.

I was the only person at that festival from outside of India because Agatha Christie is still such a big name.

That and clearly was a huge name in the 1960s too.

Unfortunately, I guess because of when she wrote her autobiography, Christie wrote it between 1950 and 1965.

She doesn't talk about this Indian trip which is a real shame, but she does mention India a few times, talked about Monte, her brother being stationed there, and also Nursi describing bananas from India to a young Agatha, which is very sweet.

A few weeks after we recorded this episode, I was going through some Agatha Christie correspondence and some of it was from the early 1960s and included things like letters about her trips and I noticed that some of the stuff where India didn't seem to match up with what I was expecting.

Actor Christie, you may have heard me complain before, does not always date her letters across once very well.

The year often gets missed off, so it can be quite difficult to workout exactly when things happened.

So Many thanks to Joe at the Christie Archive Trust, which is the family archive, for looking into this for me.

And he's checked Agatha Christie's passports and can confirm that actually Agatha and Max, her husband, were both in India early 1960, which is what we expected.

But that seems to have been more of a sort of lecturing tour for Max, although they certainly did do some sightseeing.

And Christie's passport is stamped the 2nd of February going into India.

That's 1960, but she's probably around a little bit before that.

And they actually went back in 1961 towards the end of 1961.

That second trip seems to have been more of a sort of leisure trip, but of sightseeing.

Thank you to Joe for looking that up, and also thank you to Matthew Pritchard for giving us permission to reproduce on our social media channels a postcard that Christie sent back from that second trip, which is the postcard that maybe go huh October.

That date doesn't seem to quite match what I was expecting.

So thank you very much, Matthew Pritchard as well.

Anyway, back to where you were.

We're not going to go through all of the mentions of India in the swinging titles that we've covered because we've done it before, but just as a quick reminder of some of the key ones.

So Miss Perry, which we covered in our archive episode, lots of symbolism of elephants and tortoises.

Lots of links to trips to India, not just Agas and Max's, but the royal trip to India as well, which is explicitly referenced.

There are several mentions in Passenger to Frankfurt.

There's a sari in the Pale Horse if you've talked in the Empire episode and in By the Pricking of My Thumbs.

So Josiah Pen.

We we spoke at length about the old ball that Tommy is talking to in by the pricking of my thumbs, the sort of old colonial figure, Sir Josiah Penn.

And just to give a bit of fleshing out to his character, we are also told that he was a young subaltern in India, which is the sort of reference that we get for a lot of these colonial characters, not just in the 60s books, but in many Christie stories, isn't it?

So the first adaptation we're going to be discussing is the 1960 Bengali language version of the mousetrap, which is called Chupi Chupi Ashi.

So this is unusual to have a film of the Mousetrap because I mean, we could have a whole podcast series about the Mousetrap yourself and certainly the the legalities of lots of things about, you know, they've been trying to be done with it over the years.

The important point is that while The Mousetrap is running in London, you can't make a film of.

It that's written into the contract.

Yeah, but it's the way that the film rights were sold a long time ago.

It sure was.

A certain amount of time had to expire before you could make a film.

So this film, it's just shy of two hours long and it's shot in black and white.

It's set in Kolkata and it's very definitely set in contemporary times, IE in 1960, isn't it?

There are guests in the story that specifically say we came here to shelter after the riots and we know that there were lots of riots specifically post partition like through the 50s.

So that helps situate the narrative.

The Longbridge Farm back story in The Mousetrap The original, which provides the motivation for murder, is in this version is now an orphanage.

Friends of the Podcast Brad Friedman has written a review of this title on his blog.

And one of the things he found out which I was interested by is that the director of this piece is Premendra Mitra.

And Brad says he had a feel for this kind of material as he himself wrote about 50 detective stories, some of them featuring a poet sleuth.

Oh, that's interesting.

So yeah, ripe to adapt to this kind of story.

I thought, I think that there's a real sense of being a mystery and a bit spooky and scary even right at the beginning, isn't it?

We have an opening sequence which has a figure in silhouettes that we're sort of following there.

Yeah, it's, yeah, You said it's quite film noir.

And also, I, I mean, there's a really clever piece of direction where the the mysterious figure, I think it's an illustration in the credits.

And then it almost walks out of the credits and into the plot.

And then we get this sinister the figure kind of stalking the rainy streets of Kolkata.

I thought it was interesting that we could pretty much see this figure at the beginning.

You know, it's a man, which I think is.

Quite.

Yeah, one of the characters calls it Mr Mr you dropped your.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So that's quite interesting.

Again, playing up the sort of scary, spooky element more than the mystery.

For mystery, you do everything you can to hide absolutely everything.

That's true.

I hadn't thought of that.

Is we've, we've said a couple of times about how rarely Christie is specific about the gender of the killer before.

She absolutely has to be.

And indeed, sometimes she very deliberately hides it.

But yeah, it's it's explicit in this version.

Yeah, well, also it struck me that this whole opening sequence, which is the murder that kicks off before the events of everyone being in the house or hotel together, this is a sequence that's in the radio version and the BBC I version.

And but cut from the play.

Well, I think I'd have to go and double check my Julia's Green, but I'm pretty sure that it was in and out in different draughts.

I think that's right.

And so this is something that's quite interesting that I wonder whether they had a draught or whether they had a copy of the radio play script or something that they were.

Working from I think they probably had a copy of the stage version that had it Cos I'm sure the.

Previews might have included it or something.

Yeah, I'm sure that there was talk of the cast were going to be called upon to be passers by to give a sense of the streets.

But I imagine one of the reasons they cut it was because the rest of it is so squarely set in Monkswell Manor in that particular room that it doesn't make sense to strike that set and and do a.

The radio serves the same function.

It does.

Yeah.

Dramatically speaking, yeah, for sure.

And it does work as a bit of a prologue.

Oh, I think it works brilliantly.

Yeah, I was.

I really liked it.

I think it sets up and it gives you a sense of real danger right from the beginning, rather than just being all something might happen.

Do you?

Like something has happened?

Yeah.

And now what's going to happen next?

So in the Mousetrap, it's three Blind mice.

Is the tune right that that we hear whistled and that is is a recurring motif.

But though in this version we get a song called He Comes Stealthily, which apparently is from a musical.

So we're told in the film within the film that it's a song that's recognised from a musical.

It's a it's a fictional musical, but, yeah, made-up for the film.

And that's that we should say.

That's the translation of Tupi Tupiashi.

That's, that's silently he comes, silently he comes or stealthily he comes.

Yeah.

Did you did you pick up?

There are sort of electronic elements to that opening number, which felt really contemporary.

But also, I mean, being the Doctor Who fan I am, I'm immediately thinking of the Radiophonic Workshop.

It has that slight sense of.

Experimental sound and it rises up before the kill about 7 minutes in.

And the other piece of soundtrack that I wanted to flag because this is not a musical.

Chupi Chupiashi is sung a couple of times and it bookends it, but it's the only song that's present.

But there is a sort of heartbeat style score towards the M which really amps up the tension.

MMM.

And then we get to the hotel.

It's the Kayaneshwari health resorts, we're told yes, instead of very nice monks.

Well, manner really relax and hopefully not one of those house sorts that only makes you eat like oh God, that's a lovely model too.

I'd like to say that I thought that.

The model.

I'm sure this is unintentional, but it looks exactly like.

Do you remember the the mousetrap branding used to have a picture of monks One man.

It was sort of midnight blue yes, and it used to have a picture of it at the bottom and the the old logo.

It looked exactly like that.

I thought it was very and I did a quick Google in the in the side by side and they did look very similar.

Oh, nice.

And we're told explicitly that it's got electricity and a telephone line, which I thought was on the nose, given that a big plot point will become the fact that the telephone lines been cut.

So interestingly, unlike the Indian city for Mystery, which translates snow for snow, and it's very easy to do that because we're in the Himalayas here in monsoon season, they've translated the snow and the snowed in aspect of the mousetrap into flooding, which I thought worked impeccably.

Well, I really like.

That, yeah, I did as well.

It also made the whole thing feel there's something a bit more dangerous about the the weather's changing so quickly.

Yeah, the water keeps coming.

Whereas with snow, it's a bit more, oh, that's a nuisance, you know, you can't get out from pain.

But with that, there's like a bit of a fear of creeping water, isn't there?

I feel that it it rises and rises.

You know it what?

It provides the exact same function a character at one point says.

Would it be possible for the murderer to come here in these present weather conditions and another character applies where he may already be here, which of course is exactly the same as the original.

I feel like there was some model work in the water, like using water as a practical effect.

There was also practical water on set, which is really hard to do.

I was.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

And really atmospheric.

There's one shot in particular where a character when the female characters opens the shutters and there's I mean, it's been sort of CSO Ed in but but a shot of running water past and again, it's frightening, yes.

And then in the climax, not to give anything away, but there are actual kind of water stunts, Although funnily enough, the the landscape of that for me gave me a bit more.

And then there were none than the mousetrap.

I agree.

I'm not the same but but it's beautifully shot.

So in terms of the key characters, obviously some are very similar to to the Mouse Trap.

There are some differences as well.

The couple who are running the hotel, it's a male and a female, but they're not a married or indeed a romantic couple.

Although it feels like the man might want there to be something developing between them, but it's just business.

Yeah.

Why do you think I made the change?

I couldn't.

No, I couldn't quite fathom why that was other than it gave her a bit of a stronger role because her pushing him away I thought was gave her a bit more to do.

But someone let us know if they think there's a particular reason why they couldn't have been a married couple.

Yeah.

Would it be?

Would it be, would it have been seen as inappropriate to have run a business with your wife in a way that it isn't here?

It wouldn't have been here.

Or whether there wouldn't have been a quality in that relationship.

Because I half expected there to be a runner of often what is inserted into these stories, romantic subplots that maybe were there or maybe we're sort of there and not quite.

But I wondered if it was going to be them coming to, if the film was going to end with them together, but it did not.

So one of the things I was interested to see going into this adaptation was how camp is Christopher Wren going to be?

Because so Christopher Wren is famously a camp character.

Actually, I was speaking to someone recently about him.

I think it was I, it was Paul Baker who has written camp and which I've shouted out on another episode.

He's seen The Mousetrap many times for many years, and he thinks that Christopher Wren has become more and more overtly queer coded.

Where is it used to be?

Do you get this reference now?

It's very open, which probably reflects the way that we talk about LGBTQ plus matters in society currently.

But in a different society, with different attitudes and many years ago, I wonder what that would be like.

So we have the character Medusa Dun Dutta.

We get the same joke.

Not that one, because Dutta was was a 19th century Bengali poet and playwright, just like Christopher Wren has a namesake.

I think the fact that he's a poet and slightly romanticised in that way means that the queer coding is still there.

But I didn't find him as overtly as certainly the portrayals of Christopher and that I've seen.

But as Paul Baker says, maybe that's maybe that's something that has been reinterpreted.

It's the difference in camp and campy, isn't it, that we've talked about before, but.

And I felt that the Missus Boyle character was given even more prominence in this than in the the play version, just because I feel like when you watch the film, this version, she, she's given so much to and she's given such emphasis from the very beginning.

This is Missus Da and she wants tea four times a day starting at

5:00 AM.

And I was, I was thinking, I don't even know if that's meant to be a joke or not.

I assume that we're supposed to think that's being really, really pushy.

So I thought maybe, maybe people

do have tea at 5:00 AM.

And now I'm sat here, I'm like, hi, Hannah, if you're listening.

My sister, I think my sister has, I mean, she gets up at stupid o'clock to all the dogs.

And she does incessantly drink tea.

I think my sister has tea four times a day starting at 5:00 AM.

There you go.

If anyone else does do write in, I'm I don't know if that's that I'm reasonable, really.

And you pointed out that Mrs Dodd doesn't actually die until an hour and a half in, which means that it's it makes sense that she it's weighted more slightly in her favour because in the play she dies at the end of Act One, which proportionately speaking, would have been earlier in this film.

But also in terms of the pace of it, that's very different to move towards.

OK, end of act one, I understand we're we're getting into the murderous element now, the newest murderous element.

Whereas if you're just in one film, then it feels like you spent a lot of time waiting for to see which of these people are going to die and what the ongoing threat might then end up being.

Yeah.

Because one thing that might be an ongoing threat in this new version is the ghost.

Of course, in the hotel, there is a ghost at the end, which doesn't really make sense.

There's the old man who sees ghosts, and there is a lot of discussion about whether he's really the age that he seems to be, which, if you've seen the Mousetrap, is an important part of the story about as to how old people actually are.

And some people are proving to be older or younger than perhaps they actually.

It's also an element of the next film we're going to be talking about, interestingly, isn't it?

Oh yes, with the fake beard.

Yes, So it is.

Yeah.

I don't know if I'm particularly on notice about this because you asked me a question about this not very long ago because a friend of yours had gone to see The Mousetrap and they'd asked, did I miss something?

Or was was it just a big coincidence that lots of people linked to this orphanage happened to be at the house or the hotel?

And I was like, oh, I think it's just coincidence.

And I think in this film you can feel the coincidence even more.

I don't know what it is, whether there's, again, just me really noticing it, but when you get to the ending and everyone's sort of got something to say about it, I was a bit like, oh, you do need a little bit of a reason, which is why in something like And Then There Were None, there is a rationale for why everyone's on that island because they've all got one person.

Curated.

Yes, that's a.

Good way to think about it.

They've been.

Curated.

Thank you.

Sometimes I'm good with words.

Who knew?

No.

I think, I think on Kemper's or maybe one of his guests quotes, there is a line that kind of hangs a hat on this and says, well, maybe it's not so much of A coincidence as you think.

But as far as we can tell, we're not told why.

I don't know if it's just the narrowing down of geography that means it's less of a coincidence.

Are they supposed to be, is Monksville Manor in the same locale?

I can't.

I can't recall, no.

You know, it's one of those things that when you really think about it, it gets tougher and tougher.

But the point is, you don't have to really think about it because you're swept along by it.

Yes.

And, and yeah, if we, as we're fond of saying, if we wanted to do something about the coincidences in Agatha Christie's, then we that podcast series would be very long indeed.

One thing that I also noticed that brings it a bit more up to date than the Mousetrap Play and To Feed like My Stories is tape recorder, is that there's use of a tape recorder, which is something that seems to pop up quite a lot when we talk about 60s.

And it's playing like an inhuman kind of howling scream, isn't it?

I'm just going around it because we're, you know, it's so important to the integrity of the mousetrap and the tradition of it that we do not spoil it.

So we won't be.

But I promise we'll be less cryptic about the next one.

Yes?

The second adaptation we're going to talk about is the 1965 Hindi adaptation of and then the called Gumnam.

Gumnam means anonymous and that's the central song that's played at several points.

And again, like the previous conversation actually bookends the film and the lyrics translate to someone is anonymous, someone is defamed, someone is unknown.

That's quite cool, isn't it?

It's really cool.

It's really setting it up to, especially because it sort of recurs and obviously as.

It yeah, it has the same flavour even though it's different, very different title.

It has the same flavours and then there were none somehow.

I wonder if it's because of Uno in.

Oh yeah, so it has.

That on and the word none.

It has that absence of hope, absence of identity feel.

2 1/2 hours, Yeah, they really, really go for it.

And good on them because it means that it's a really interesting production.

Yeah, It's not to say the others aren't, but I think that this is a particular take on the story that embraces what's really important about the original story and says we're not just going to change the character names, we're going to make this as a Bollywood film.

Yeah.

So it's relocated to Mumbai and then the surrounding area.

1965, the year it was released.

Just like Chupi Chupiashi, there is a murder straight away.

It's very noir.

We follow the murderer and it's on the kind of mean streets of the city.

It's, it's funny how similar those openings are.

And like we say, neither of those openings appear in certainly all versions or if any of the stories they're adapting, but they both make sense to add a bit of a punch at the start of an adaptation.

Especially with a longer film, which these are longer films, all the ones we're discussing today.

I mean, it's only two hours for the trap.

That's the shortest of the three.

But still, I think if you want to immediately say this is the type of thing that's happening in this movie, because especially with Gumnam, I think that there's every chance that there's a lot of spectacle early on which is not about murder and death and and capturing a killer.

Yeah, the first kind of 20 minutes are more all set up really.

It takes it takes them a little while to get to the house.

So we have the title sequence, which feels very contemporary and it's it plays over a dead face in a not dissimilar way to you just mentioned the English language and then there were none film that we've covered elsewhere on the podcast.

And that has those who done it break shots that we've posted on social media and stuff before, plastered over the the beautiful female leads faces.

And it's it's not dissimilar cinematography wise.

And you said spectacle.

We've got this, these scenes of swinging and dancing and doing the twist and these musical riffs.

It really captures your attention right away.

It does, yeah.

And the number.

Interesting.

So I this really appealed to me.

So the number is loosely translated as Tell Us Your Name, and you sort of get to know each of the characters and they are selected to basically partake in the story in this moment.

What I love about that is it's almost like the upbeat, fun side of the coin to the other side of the coin to the previous song.

Someone is anonymous, someone is unknown.

And then it's like, tell us your name.

You know, it's it's there's a very clear through line.

Like the literal taking off of the masks.

Like we actually are seeing who these people really are.

Yeah, wearing masks at this, sort of.

Party, exactly.

And it's a party which the special prize is to win a ticket to go to this house.

But yeah, throughout, I mean, the sound, unscape and the direction is all very stylized, isn't it?

It's very lavish and bright.

I will say though, I think we both commented slightly disparagingly when watching it about how whenever anything happens, you get 7 reaction shots, one for each of the characters, sort of queued up after each other, most of whom are doing the same expression.

Yeah, same expression as each other, but also same expression every time.

Same expression as they did in the previous scene.

Yes, exactly.

And then in terms of the sort of musical numbers, as we go through, we've got there's that number that's sort of like a romantic duet on the rock.

It's just like I I think was to use sort of the Buffy musical terms breakout hit.

I think that that's oh, interesting.

I think I'm right in saying that that's the one that that was the the.

I did not know that I liked the in the book.

And then there were none.

Those rocks are lethal.

And then it's.

Yeah, it's so it's so Bollywoodified that in this one, it's the place where where the lovers meet.

You know, poor Doctor Armstrong has pushed off that thing.

But in the film, it's just for song and dance.

And we should say with these translations, we're going off the subtitles, which might be slightly inaccurate, but the gist of the song is basically, you've made my life difficult and you've made my death difficult because I've fallen in love with you.

My life is harder because I'm in love with you, but also my death would be hard because we'd no longer be together.

I think is the jazz.

I think so.

But interestingly, I don't know if another location fell through or something, but we get a second number on those rocks, don't we?

That Kitty Kelly song, yes, which again, is really upbeat.

Very.

It really does run the gamut of tone, yes, because it goes from all this sunshine and everything.

And then the last, the third act is suddenly, you know, everyone sweaty and Moody and scared and it's darker and.

I think This is why some people who've commented on this film and others from a sort of Western Agatha Christie fan perspective can find it funnier than it's meant to be.

Although it's some of it is supposed to be funny because you're not used to Bollywood's and that's how Bollywood tells stories that you do get these for us handbrake turns of tone and that you might have a song at a strange time or you might have, you know, characters that operate, you know, the full character and stuff.

It's very typical of Bollywood.

Whatever.

Which in this is is Mahmoud the the Butler who's very much that figure who I read annoys at least one of them over the cast because they felt it was upstaging everyone.

Be like that's the point.

He did though He so upstages everyone.

He's the main 1 you remember, isn't it?

And there is an acknowledgement of something else that's really important in in Indian society, which is discussions of caste and particularly prejudices around the lightness or darkness of somebody's skin.

And I think the Butler actor and character is of darker pigment than some of the other characters.

And in fact, that's in the script.

At one point someone says, I'm quoting to him, shut up, you dark fellow.

And when he has his own number, he kind of, it's quite nice actually.

He kind of reclaims it, doesn't he?

He's like, what?

So what if I am dark?

I'm a lover, I'm this, I'm that.

But yeah, you're right.

Exactly.

I definitely think that's a Westernised perspective.

And I think the point is that it's full bloodedly going for everything, isn't it?

Like, if it's funny, it's really funny.

If it's dark, it's really dark.

And actually that's you've sort of just got to go with it.

That's kind of the point, you know, I've written in our notes, lusty sexy rain song.

There's that.

They say no more.

Exactly what can I say, covering all bases, these songs.

And then the reprise of the Someone is Anonymous song, which opens the lyrics change slightly.

So we go from someone is unknown, Someone is Anonymous to who has become the killer.

Even the death is shocked, which I thought, yeah, worked really well.

There are a few reveals because there there was this one thing about 1 character who's in disguise.

Maybe I won't ruin it too much for anyone who but.

I already have.

Oh yeah?

Well, there's someone who's wearing a very obvious fake beard.

Straight away and.

Straight away we're like, is that supposed to be a fake beard because that clearly and then you slightly have that thing of going.

Is it a production problem or is it a plot points?

Because I guess there's an argument to say it's deliberately not very good.

Yeah.

So that the audience spot it.

Yeah, because we sure did.

Absolutely, right away.

Yeah, I think probably the most shocking moment, certainly in terms of the direction, cinematography, is the they're in the woods and the when the noose appears behind Katie.

And that of course is after we've fallen in love with her, with the Kitty Kelly song, after we've really got to know her and come to like her.

That was the the death that I felt, you know, watching through it.

And then at the end, one of the things that I think is really clever and acts as quite a cathartic, almost palate cleansing moment is that the main song, Gun Nam is reprise.

Someone is unknown.

Someone is is defamed but subverted and made cheery as they sort of fly off into the sun.

Slightly Scooby-doo ending, isn't it like we?

All yeah, I love it finished.

With a joke.

Oh yeah, it's great and and kind of help, but notice that more people survive this film than most versions of so many.

What an unsuccessful serial I.

Know, I know.

So yeah, Agatha would never very, very much worth watching that was.

Yeah, I enjoyed that a lot.

The third adaptation we're going to talk about was not made in the 60s, but it's an adaptation of a 60s book.

So that's the 2003 Bengali language adaptation of Shabho Maharat roughly translates to the first shot, and that's a adaptation of the mirror crack from side to side.

The Mirror Cracks From Side to Side is a Miss Marple novel about a poisoning at a film star's house from 1962.

So this is in colour obviously 2003.

It's just shy of three hours, so it is the longest of the three that we're talking about.

And contemporary set.

It was also really well received.

It was award-winning.

In fact it won two National Film Awards, one for best feature film in Bengali and Ricky Golzar, one for best supporting actress.

And the director Rituparno Ghosh was a very well respected director.

Sadly, no longer with us, but staunch feminist, you can really feel that lens in this film.

So yeah, I said it.

I said it means the first shot.

I I've seen different interpretations of that.

Jamie Bentall.

In his book says it's break a leg.

Oh, because it's because.

It's a first shot, I guess, because so I guess there's lots of meaning.

There's yeah.

So basically to start something, it's where the film starts, which is the moment the film comes together.

And but also I think shot or shoot has obviously the double meaning with gun, murder, death.

But also, I think you can even I saw Mahara in particular is kind of linked to the moment, like the moment of realisation or the moment everything changes or the moment everything.

Begins.

It's used by itself a few times.

In the film, which is what made.

Me think, oh that's what that means.

Yes, sometimes that didn't.

Translate it in the subtitles, because you're supposed.

To it didn't yeah, I mean that moment of realisation, that is Marina's frozen look, isn't it?

That is the moment where it all clicks for her.

So, yeah, but it also works because I guess because instead of going to a fate or a or a cocktail party, this film is very much based around a film shoot itself.

And that's borne out by the fact that we see the, the studio accident, the the crashing down of the light instead of a, a piece of action to bolster the the narrative midway through.

That is an inciting incident in this film.

And it happens not even 15 minutes in.

And on that note, the Heather character, rather than being a sort of obsessive fan, is actually another actor working with the Marina Grey character.

The Lola Brewster.

Really, she's essentially the Lola Brewster character and you're told at one point that she has been up for supporting actor, so it has that same thing as she's subordinate to the Marina figure, which makes a lot of sense.

But you summarised it aspects of this film very well in your book.

Angela Christie on screen.

Yes, it was a long time ago now, and that time I was this like chapter 15 or 16 or 16.

And I remember being very tired and going through lots and lots of films and going what's different about this one.

And for me, what stood out as different about this one was that it was so explicit about the way the character relations worked.

Particularly in terms of the matriarchal energy in society.

Absolutely.

And often we'll get, you know, Miss Marvel being Aunt Jane, but she isn't integrated into a family in the way in the way that Rockies character is in this.

Because her niece is a journalist who's investigating what's going on.

She's.

Which again, is so well used in the film because it's got really good plot point to it that actually this whole the way that you can use a journalism, the way that you can use journalism.

And especially things like printing something in a magazine which is used to capture, you know, the the the culprit by the end of the movie to bring them out in a way.

But also it gives this amazing sequence where the niece is interviewing the Heather Badcock figure as she's coughing her guts up and dying.

So you have her directly there, which means you again, you have that that element that Chrissy wrote into the original, which is Marple's eyes and ears are around the inciting instance, but she's not there herself.

She's at one remove.

In this case, the remove is familial.

Yeah, in the version that I watched most recently, I don't think this was translated, but my old DVD is.

There's a caption right at the beginning which I think sums it up really nicely.

So the message says in part to those Miss Marples who have guessed what's wrong when their son skips school, feigning an upset stomach, but have remained silent.

To those Miss Marple who have guessed what's wrong when their daughters returned from their in laws with blotchy eyes but have remained silent.

So it's about, you know, it's, it's dedicated.

To.

Older women in particular, especially matriarchal figures, which is, you know, important in Miss Marple's world, but also important, I think, more so in Indian society than in British society.

Yeah, yeah.

And we'll come back to that when we speak to Aisha.

But yeah, we have a lassie, not a daiquiri.

Although I've got to be honest, it doesn't look like a lassie.

It looks like a Coca-Cola.

I don't.

Know what?

A lassie.

Is it's like a Milky And I checked this with Aisha because I was like in my head, a lassie, like a mango lassie or something.

It's kind of milkshakey, OK.

And so when I saw it look black on the version of the film that I watched and I was like, is it just a catch all term for any cold drink?

But she assures me not anyway.

But but that's what's dropped.

And there is an emphasis on the smashed glass.

Yes.

And throughout you get, in fact, in a very pivotal point at the end, you get Marina looking into her compact, you get the Jason Rudd figure looking into the mirror while he's shaving.

You get smashed glass and mirrors threaded throughout.

And it's funny because even though the title is no longer the mirror cracked, it's interesting how often mirrors and glass are interwoven specifically actually in adaptations of Christie's that have mirror in the title.

The irony being that Christie famously never really makes good on her promise of mirrors whenever she features them in titles.

Because of course, there is no literal mirror in, in the original book of, of the mirror cracked.

But at that moment when the, when the lassie is is dropped, the pivotal moment, the frozen look there, there are some lines of dialogue.

Everybody applauds and someone says, why did everyone clap?

And the director says it's a superstition of the industry.

But of course, that's how she'll die.

So it feels like they're applauding what's just happened.

It's a there's a real and we, we as Christie fans know that we're knowing the story coming to it.

We know that they're applauding at the point at which she's just ingested poison.

Yeah, which makes it even more powerful, I think.

In terms of the characters and their backgrounds, I was saying that it's basically Lola Brewster who ends up being murdered rather than Heather because she takes on that role.

Yes, well, it's a mix of both characters.

Yeah, and she's a semi retired actor who's now been coaxed out of retirement for this film.

But what was interesting is that just like everyone in Hollywood and fashionable people are using Carmo in the mirror.

Cracked she is also a drug user, but rather than the sort of respectable face of drug use, I guess, or a publicly respectable face of using karma, using prescription, she is has been an addict.

You know she's been.

It's very explicit.

About that, there's a lot of discussion about how a drug use has been very, very problematic.

Just so different to really sort of, oh, everyone uses a Carmo way that's discussed in in the novel.

On the drugs theme, the drug that actually kills a restrictnine, which I know has many.

It has many precedents in popular culture beyond just the references that I have as a Christie geek, but I choose to believe that it's always a reference to because that's the drug that Christie starts with.

That's the mysterious of various styles.

My favourite of all the poisons I would.

Say so the the German measles or the rubella of the plot is translated.

Well my subtitles said chicken pox.

Yes, I think this isn't right.

So the word they use is mutter, which is actually the name for the sort of mother goddess, but it's a word they use to denote a number of contagious diseases.

1 is chicken pox, 1 is measles.

So I think it's an approximation of measles, German measles.

I mean, in terms of fidelity to the source material, because that's what people like to talk about when it comes to adaptations.

There is a murder attempt using an inhaler or an atomizer.

There is still a fake letter, although one of the big departures I would say is there are three love plots which are threaded throughout.

But also certainly there's sort of longer scenes at the end.

We sort of intercut with their man others, which keeps it dynamic, but it's there is quite a lot going on there.

Is a lot going on with relationships in particular?

Ranga Pashima, the Miss Marple character played by Rakhi Galzar.

She is a widow in her late 50s, so she was married and a bit younger than Miss Marple.

But she, she's so sharp.

She's very maternal.

I thought it was interesting.

I, I was a bit nervous when I saw that she was a quote cat lady, as you would be given the connotations in, in popular culture.

She's looking after six kittens.

But I do think the way she talks about her caring for them and and watching them grow and and giving them milk and the sort of swelling orchestral soundtrack behind it as she talks about them and looks at them is very touching and helps move it away from something that might have been derisive.

Yes, I liked how quickly there's always this thing about how do you introduce Miss Marple and and show everybody that she's smart, right and in the Angela Lansbury film of Mirror crack, we've got her solving film right at the beginning here we've got the Miss Marple character working out that letters fake right at the beginning.

It's been written into this this magazine right this off the problem page.

So immediately we know that she uses both evidence and instinct.

So both of those things help to explain why she knows something's fake, which is of course, that's that's Miss Marple all.

Over, Yeah.

Direction wise, it feels quite lyrical.

It feels almost art house to me.

I don't know if you got that, but certainly very tender.

Because the direction is good, it actually kept my attention.

But also because there are so many themes you were saying about the different relationships, but also this underlying theme of addiction and this underlying theme of secrets is such an interesting thing that runs through it.

And what really struck me this time around, which I don't suppose I picked up quite so much on last time, was how serious it is as a character piece and as a thriller that it absolutely is taking the source material seriously.

So that's why it doesn't surprise me too much that it did well on awards because it wasn't doing like, oh, let's have a bit of fun with this.

And I read a few reviews and I was really struck by how many reviews were saying what an amazing twist at the end.

They were really shocked by who done it and everything.

So actually, when you place this within the wider character drama, thriller stuff and give it a bit more room to breathe, perhaps it's tougher to work out.

I think one of the reasons why the solution seems buried, maybe slightly better than other versions, is that you see the Marina character.

So that's Padmini Ranu Chowdhury really emotionally affected by the death of the Heather slash Lola figure, which I watching that I was sort of going either that's a decoy.

I mean, it makes sense that she would be emotionally affected by it either way, whether she did it or not.

But it felt like that was a successful piece of misdirection.

But she.

So that character is actually a former actor and now an investor in her husband Sambit Roy's film.

That's the Jason Rudd character.

And yeah, there is this scene in particular, Padmini saying, do you not feel bad that a person you knew is no more?

And he's kind of shaving in the mirror.

And Sambit says, I don't feel bad for people who ruin themselves.

Also, in the scene, one of them says, quote, there are no ordinary fans.

Which feels like that could be about how to get Badcock essentially, couldn't it?

But that is very much a central idea within the Mirror Cracked.

I think the thing that stayed that will stay with me from watching this film again that I I've thought about a lot since is I call it the final scene.

But actually it's a set of scenes taking place of about the last half hour of the film where we finally get our sort of showdown, I guess between Ranga Pashima to our Miss Marple figure and our Pagmini, who's our Marina type figure.

So basically, you know, when all the truth comes out and I thought it was such a wonderful opportunity to have two slightly older actors, female actors, sit down and play out a real gamut of emotions to really tell their, you know, show us their characters, show us their strengths.

Talk about so much.

And there's this little sort of lace of danger because we know that the Marina characters brought these sort of cookies or these these sweets.

She called them.

You know poisons.

And is she going to get Miss Marple to eat?

They keep sort of looking at the foreground.

They both know they both have a really good idea as to what's going on here.

And there is this thing where actually the Miss Marple figure may have let her get away with it.

And that says, well, I've been a fan, you've gone through terrible things and that there is a real look between them.

But the Marina figure, Padmini, she knows that that that's not going to actually work.

And so there's a real look exchange between them at the end as she takes those poison sweets away with her, that we know what's what's going to happen now.

But I thought that was really interesting.

And my main thinking was, oh, we were so robbed of this in the Landsbury film.

Sorry to keep going back to that, because to have had a 20 minute scene between Elizabeth Taylor and Angela Lansbury that actually got to the emotional core of the story.

Oh, that.

That would have been wonderful, Yeah.

And dare I say in the book, I mean the the, the ghost of that relationship is evident at the very end of the book, but it's Miss Marple literally standing above a dead Marina and reciting Tennyson.

You feel that relationship between them, the parallels, but it's not actually on the page or not explicitly, which is a shame.

Yeah, it's so powerful.

I'm going to quote a little bit to round us off, but Pashima says to Padmini, I'm indebted to you in many ways.

I didn't know anything.

I can cook and do some stitching.

If no one is around, I can sing a couple of lines.

How would I know that?

I can use my brain to connect things to know the truth.

So it's almost like a Marple origin story within the within this world that it's the case that Padmini has given to Pashima has actually made a Miss Marple out of her almost, which is quite touching.

And they talk about how she'd like an autograph and she says, I'll send it later.

And you're thinking, is there going to be a later, You know?

But then the final monologue is a message that Amini or Marina sends to Peshima in which she says, I didn't know your name to address the autograph to you.

And it's over a shot.

Part of this is over a shot of the kittens playing, which is really heartbreaking.

And, you know, the monologue goes on.

And then at the end of it, she says I never gave such a long autograph to anyone before because it's essentially her confession.

And we hear Pashima or Miss Marple saying she won't publish the letter with her niece, IE she won't make her confession public, she won't finger her as the murderer.

It's really powerful.

Where are we off today, Mark?

We're off to have our first interview.

The first proper interview and certainly both of us, you interviewed Matthew for little clips.

Oh yes, that we've peppered Matthew Pritchard, Christie's grandson.

But in terms of like proper interview that we're doing together, Yeah, Well, and I interviewed.

You.

Oh yes.

So there's that, yes that's true for about 6 minutes and then you said stop asking me questions, let's put the film on.

Yes, first proper interview.

Ayesha Menon.

So I've known Ayesha, we met working on radio drama.

I've known her for about 7 years now I think.

So she is a brilliant writer, director, producer, actor, you name it.

She has a company with her husband called Gold Hawk Productions with John Dryden who's also brilliant and lovely and she's fantastic.

She wrote the very well received Radio 4 adaptation of Midnight's Children, which was everywhere a few years ago.

And she's done many Dickens and Hardys and and adaptations and her own stuff and all sorts, thrillers, crime stories, you name it.

I actually reached out to her because I thought she would be interested in talking about these films.

She had seen Gumnum and she did have a few thoughts on it.

She hadn't seen the other two.

And then she went, but you do know that I've done a version of Mirror Cracked, right?

And I was like, what?

And she was like, yeah, I'm sure we would have talked about this at the time.

Famously, my memory is is brilliant.

So I'd love to say that this all came together through grand design on my part.

But actually it is luck of the draw because basically the the Rachel Wagstaff stage adaptation of the Mirror Cracked that we saw with Susie Blake playing Miss Marple a few years ago.

And indeed we saw an Amdran version of it in London last week, directed by friend of the podcast Dan Aisha was enlisted to write a version for Indian audiences for the Jamshed Barber Theatre in Mumbai in 2020.

And that's that's going to be the main topic of our discussion.

Now we've got a train to catch to Winchester, have we not?

Hi, Aisha.

Thanks for joining us or thanks for having us more specifically.

You're well, welcome.

What's?

So go on, tell us, what's your relationship with Agatha Christie first, first and foremost?

I've always loved a murder mystery.

Who done it?

I used to read Nancy Drew case files when I was younger, which which are fabulous young lady solving crimes and I was addicted to them.

So my uncle said, you know, I think you could do a bit better.

So when I was about 12, he gave me and then there were none.

And it was pretty life changing for me, I have to say, because I mean the whole idea of a red herring, which I then I proceeded to use a lot in my writing.

You know, it first hit me that what a brilliant thing that was.

And she's always been around actually in India, you know, we are when we, when I went to university, I did English literature.

We were all reading Tennyson and Dickens and all of that.

So it's not so good writing is good writing and it sort of works anywhere, I think.

And.

So would you say in your experience that Christie is widely read in India, as widely read as here or?

Very much so.

Yeah, very much so.

It's I think probably even more.

Sometimes I think, yeah, when I, when I used to talk to my university friends about Dickens and Christie, and I think they seem to know, I mean, we'd be able to sure, talk on the same level, but yeah, not so many people.

So and then there were None was the first the gateway drug and then what?

So and you just sort of went on from there.

Yeah, yeah.

Then I read it was think mode on the Orient Express probably.

Oh, you started out with the with.

The big.

Last thing.

So I always find that interesting.

You know, sometimes people be like, oh, the first Christie I read was like, I think after the funer links or something.

Yeah, it's just like a completely random like, but you, you like.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think I think it was because it was a recommendation and recommendations of an hour, you know, the sure Pillow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But then I went, you know, off kilter.

And then so she's always stayed with me, I think, and has very much influenced my writing.

Yeah, now.

Well, you can see that, I mean, we met working on your excellent thriller Into the Maze and that although it's it was more of a thriller than a than a whodunit, but it is it was tightly plotted and clued in the sort of psychological motivations I can see.

I can certainly see the influence of Christie in your writing.

Yeah, and there's Undercover Mumbai, which is on our on our feed, which is my Indian police officer.

And she solves a crime every 15 minute episodes and every.

15 minutes.

You could set your clock by.

But also.

Nothing.

Yeah, one of the other aspects of your writing which I very much admire is the way you've remixed classic, specifically Dickens and I want to say Hardy and and writers like that for radio before and you and you very much reimagine and remix.

And that, I mean, is something that, as we've discussed in previous episodes, that's something Christy was interested in as well.

So maybe you have more of an affiliation with her than?

Yeah, yeah.

I've been writing adaptations of adaptations of that.

I do.

I've done a lot of adaptations that have been set in, you know, India, Syria, whatever, the various different ones of Dickens and all the, the stuff that I love.

But Dickens of course works in India because it's, I mean, the Dickens of that day could be India Today with children sleeping, you know, on, on the streets and people cheating each other and everything.

It, it just works.

Dickens works in today's India, but Agatha Christie would work as well because she's just such a fantastic storyteller.

So that kind when you structure something so beautifully, it could it could work anywhere.

Yes, you're talking yourself into some commissions here.

So you told me before you've seen Gumnam.

Yeah, but not the other two adaptations that we discussed.

No, but what was your take on that?

Did you watch it as a youngster?

Yeah, I did.

I watched as a young girl and I didn't even.

I'd already read and then there were none.

I had no idea that that's what I was watching.

And I kept thinking vaguely familiar, but of course, you know, disguised and interrupted by lots of Bollywood singing, lots of melodrama, all the looks they gave each other and the crazy sort of background music.

Yeah.

You said like the slapstick, like there's one character in particular.

Yeah, very slapstick.

But that's what the movies of the 60s were like in India.

There had to be slapstick, you know, They had to cover all territory.

Slapstick, humour, music, big fights.

They had to have big kind.

Of Oh yes, we've got those as well, yeah.

Dishum, Dishum, That noise of the fighting had to be really intense.

So it was, it's padded with all these things that make 60s Bollywood that I didn't even realise it was Agatha Christie.

Yeah.

And I thought, oh, right.

But there's a lot of stuff from the 60s that was adapted from existing murder mysteries.

Yeah.

Well, I guess even though and then they went on the original, it's so tonally different from what they made it into in this adaptation.

It does kind of work.

I mean it, it's very much a legitimate other version of it, I think we found.

Even the weird guys like smoking cigars and suit and everything.

It just still, it does work.

Yeah, it is actually quite realistic.

Yeah.

So onto the mirror crack from side to side.

So how did that come about that project for you?

Well, I was.

I was contacted by Mellie and.

Mellie still the director.

And she had heard something that I had done and she said to me, look, I've got this project.

It's really ambitious.

I already have a script, but I've gone to India and I've cast these people.

Yes, I.

Read this.

Yeah.

So she'd cast them already.

And then she said, how do you feel about writing a script around them?

And the interesting thing is I, because I've worked so much in India, I knew all the people who were cast so soon as she told me that the lead character was Shanas Patel.

She's a posse.

So I immediately thought I I know how she'd speak and.

Is in is playing Miss Mystery.

Yes, play Miss Marple.

Miss Marple.

So the Miss Marple became Posse because I knew Shanas was posse and she she can do that.

She can do anything.

Shanas can do anything.

But I kept in mind who the characters were, like, yeah, So Mamta Ghosh in my play, who is Marina Greg, the actress in the original, she's played by this very popular, very famous Marathi actress.

So I I kept her in mind.

I used the language I used.

I used a lot of their background to make it happen.

But Mellie was really interested in the idea of, you know, exploring different cultures within, within India and, and sort of just posing them with each other, you know, the Muslim secretary and the Sadaji bodyguard and all of that.

Yeah, it was very important to herself.

Which is one of the many things that translates really nicely, because in the English version, that's Giuseppe, who is Italian, and Ellen Zevenski, who's Polish.

So yeah, I thought, I thought that was one of the things that was really interesting about your version is that you can map those.

Yes, Inspector Colasso, which is your Democratic the the inspector character in particular has a few lines where he's slightly dismissive or prejudicial about those.

Characters.

So that's very much coming from as that's very much how my aunts and uncles used to talk actually so interesting.

So it worked really well.

Like whatever, whatever they were talking to each other about just kind of fits so perfectly.

I love Mirrorcrat especially because when when John and I got married, we tried to have children and we were very unsuccessful for many years.

And it, I was going through IVF for many years when I read mirror crack.

And then because it's so much about motherhood and about, you know, children missing.

We had so many accidents and things went wrong with during those few years before we had Hugo, because we were going through so much of that.

I remember mirror crack meaning something especially to me.

So I felt like I, I, I really wanted to, but especially talking about in an Indian context because because of the elderly population and because of how we feel about our elderly, it's very different from, from what it is like here.

I thought that, that, you know, so it was two things.

It was motherhood, children, and it was, it was my parents that I was thinking about and I thought I couldn't say no to it really.

That's really beautiful.

I I mean it is obviously that that kind of spine of the the story is evident in Christie's original, but I think that's something that Rachel Wagstaff version did draw out in particular.

So I can see why that would have appealed to you and as.

Soon as I read the script.

Actually that's.

Yeah, there's a there's a line that you retain, which I when we were watching it the other day, I thought, God, that really is the point, the heart of the story, which is Miss Marple saying to Marina Greg, no children.

It's strange, isn't it, how the world makes you feel as if you failed in some way.

And it does feel like the various sort of female characters that pivot around that will have different takes on all.

Different lives, yeah.

And and to connect that to Miss Marple, I mean, that was very important to us that that that sort of meant something to her personally.

So they had, you know, that shared feeling that and you know, when you have and we were, we were going through that state, that period where people were saying to us, oh, come on, isn't it time you had children already?

Yeah, we're trying.

We really are trying.

And I'm thinking about what our lives would be like if we didn't.

And with the number of failed pregnancies thinking, gosh, we lost.

We so how much we've lost, you know, you feel like, you know, all those things, all those children that you've lost.

So it was, so that really appealed to me from the script.

And Rachel was amazing because she, she was so accepting of what I did to a script.

I mean, it's, it's because I, I did want to sort of, you know, be respectful because it's an adaptation of an adaptation.

So, you know, there's 2 levels to think of.

I want to be respectful to the original and to what she had done.

But she was very accepting of of what we did in the end.

The other thing that you just mentioned a minute ago about the sort of venerating elders aspect, I noticed that it's there's a line that you add later on in the script when the Inspector and Miss Mystery go to the film studios for the first time.

And there's a bit of a kind of fudging, which I think the audience are in on in terms of Miss Marple or Miss Mystery.

Yeah.

Yeah, but that is, I mean that that is something that bothers me in the original.

But in India, it totally works because if there's a police officer who comes with their aunt, raging aunt or granny, you would, you wouldn't bat an island.

They'd be like, OK, it's brilliant.

I've brought my entire family.

They all said while I interview you.

It's brilliant.

You you add the you add the line.

So the inspector says I can't believe I don't.

You convinced me to bring here and you have Miss Mystery reply.

Old people can make you feel comfortable.

Which, yeah, just sort of.

Well, of course, you know, I'm helping out actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When?

We were looking at the scripts.

One of the things that merely stood out and that Grace had even before I read it, about things that that were interesting about it was that you've changed the year, which of course we're obsessed with the.

Whole.

Thing is, is is period.

So you.

No, no, no, don't.

No, no, no, no.

Not.

Here to to judge, to understand.

So you moved it to 1976?

Yes.

Why?

Okay, it's because the original set in the 60s and therefore there's this whole development that is happening that gives them all.

Suspected this would be your answer.

Right.

It gives them all a bit of trauma and all the posh people are worried about it and all the, you know, you know, the how it goes.

So it was various decisions all kind of backing up against each other.

And it was if they were Bollywood film stars and I was thinking of a quiet location around Bombay, it would be Goa.

If it was Goa, preferably would be within the Catholic community because because I I I could feel it there.

Yeah.

And and you're writing partly from your experience?

Yeah.

And therefore the time in which Goa felt the most change was in the 70s.

So not the 60s, but the 70s were really important in Goa because that's when the hippies came in and the drugs came in.

And all the residents of this really of these really quiet little Hamlets in Goa were thinking what is going on?

There are nude people on my beach and.

Which is basically a line that you give to Dolly actually, which which is great.

It was, it is shocking.

It was shocking, but it's still is because I have an uncle who lives in Goa and they live in it.

You know the part where it's not touristy?

When you go to the touristy part, it's wow.

It's like it's the 60s all over again.

Have you been?

You've been to Goa, haven't.

You no, we we were gonna do Goa, but we ended up doing Kerala instead.

Oh, we didn't have time for Goa.

Well, you went mature.

You should.

Well, this is it, I think.

No.

Well, I think, I think probably you said to me Kerala is kind of what Goa used to be like, whereas go is a bit, yes, that's true.

Over touristy, that's true.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, ago is great, but I can imagine, Can you imagine being a resident in a place like that and suddenly it's taken over people?

Yeah, I did suspect that would be your answer and it is.

It does map the tensions, like you say, the sort of class tensions or societal tensions very directly.

And it's, and it's also a great bit of comedy to have characters like the Inspector and like Dolly's sort of going, Oh my God, they're nude and there are stalls and they're selling God knows what.

They're taking drugs.

And all of that, as we know, vary in keeping with what Christie was concerned with in her 60s books.

So I wondered as well, was there Hilda's back story?

So your Heather character?

Yeah.

She talks about the quote, liberation of Goa.

Yes.

And that for the timeline of when she met Marina, that makes the 70s make sense as well.

I wondered if that was something else.

Yeah.

Yeah, I had to find, I had to find all these real events.

But interestingly, you didn't have to change all of them because I also noted one that you were able to keep the same was in Rachel Wagstaff's version.

There's that whole back story about Miss Marple's lost love, Lawrence, who is shot for cowardice in the First World War.

Yeah.

And you mapped that pretty directly still on to the First World War that.

Was in India, but my my grandfather was used to was in the army and he was a Colonel in the army.

And so I know that I know that world.

The film they're shooting in your versions of script is in Hindi, although obviously the play is in English, yes.

So talk us about why you make that choice.

Is that simply because place you know generally would be in English?

In Mumbai.

Yes, that sort of play, I mean an Agatha Christie play would definitely no, they've done versions actually in Hindi.

They have done it.

But it's it's, it's the kind of audience that that Mellie still was writing the play for their different sort of audiences, not writing, but directing the play for.

It's so for that, for what she was doing and for the actors that she chose and the kind of theatre she was playing in, those players would be in English.

But movies are mostly in Hindi.

There are some English movies made in within with Indian actors, but mainly movies would be in Hindi.

I thought it'd be nice, actually quite nice to have the juxtaposition.

Yeah, yes.

And also that's how in that's how we talk in India.

We sometimes break off mid sentence.

I know.

Yeah, Into.

Hindi or Bengali or whatever.

That worked really well.

Disgusted.

Sort of.

We added more actually the oh really?

They're all coming from different backgrounds because that's the way I grew up.

My father's from Kerala and my mother is from Mumbai.

But when they met, they spoke to each other in English and then so both their families spoke to us in English.

So we grew up, my sister and I, not actually learning either of the languages because no one spoke to us in Marathi or in in.

So it's everybody else's fault.

It's totally, totally this is what I take to therapy.

Brilliant.

We wanted to talk a bit more about a few other aspects of the play that seemed to translate quite easily.

So yeah, you kind of mentioned, but we have the kind of sleepy Goan village and Bruganza mansion instead of Saint Mary Mead and Gossington Hall.

We.

Can let dog in.

This is a rolling theme on our podcast.

It's true.

Desperate.

Yes, the archive episode, There's a there's a lovely hello, you should do a dog.

Yes, well, the, the the all about Agatha that I was telling you about before they have they have Kemper's recently done a a special about the dogs in Agatha Christie, the title of which is Woof Colon, the Dogs of Agatha Christie.

Do check it out available at all major podcasts.

That's so funny.

Hey, OK, so says yeah, Marina's dress, which famously the the drink is spilled on yes is now her sari.

Yeah, obviously, like Hollywood and Bollywood, the translation works quite seamlessly, I think in terms.

I think so, yeah.

I mean, we were.

I remember a long conversation during the writing process where everyone was like, does that make sense for a Bollywood actress to have so many husbands?

And we discussed it to death because we were like, oh, I don't know.

I think, I think they did.

Yeah, I think they did actually, but maybe not more than two.

So I can't even remember what happens in the in the.

I can't remember what we decided on because yeah, two, I thought 2 was.

Original it's.

55, I think, yeah, yeah, with Elizabeth Taylor or something.

I can totally see that, you know, but.

That's so interesting.

But in India, no.

So in the original, well, in both versions.

So when Dolly is talking about the changes they've made to her former home in your version, she says they can be very uncouth, those Bombay Wallers.

So did I tell you they've added six more bathrooms, which just works perfectly in terms of obviously the thing about adding the bathrooms is in the original and it's drawn from Chrissy's life, in fact.

But it just, yeah, it all works seamlessly I think.

Yeah, it does.

And all these old bungalows and everything, they don't have that many bathrooms.

So that is especially kind of quite joking, I think.

And that is, yeah, that is, is not, is a, it's a kind of byword for saying those sorts of people are a bit gauche or a bit it just, yeah.

Yeah.

And.

And baths, I suppose, is something that we didn't really do much of when we were younger.

We always, we had a bucket and A and A and a mug and you just fill it with hot water and then you kind of give yourself a yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's what we used to call bath.

So when I came here, I suddenly rose, oh, you have to get into a bathtub.

It's like a totally different.

I I may cut this out, but the thing you mentioned before, my mother calls that a personal wash.

Yes.

I've met that as well.

You are so cute.

Personal.

Yeah.

The I may spare her and I'll ask her if it's OK to leave.

That I love.

I've forgotten how to pronounce the inspector's name again.

I'm so sorry.

Colasso, Colasso.

It's OK.

That is a really difficult pronunciation because most Indians also don't know how to pronounce that.

The soft sea feels unusual.

Yeah, yeah.

It, well, I don't know that's there are lots of it's because, you know, it's a long story, but because there's so much Portuguese influence in Goa, all their names are sort of slightly, you know, Briganza, Fernandez, Lopez Pereira.

And so it's, it's all kind of, it comes from somewhere else, not.

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, and so all the Catholics are a bit of a mishmash.

Some Catholics came, were converted by the British who came, but Goa was all Portuguese influence, so their names are just slightly different.

So most people around India would not know how to say colasso.

I just know because my uncle's in.

Colasso So you named him off your uncle?

Yeah, most of them are either neighbours or or.

Yeah, Inspector Colasso at one point in the original says it's like bloody Piccadilly Circus in here.

And you translated it to to Vt station, which I noticed straight away because I went there and I've got a picture.

I've got a few pictures of Johnny from there, actually, and I will post those to our social media when this episode drops.

But yeah, I like that.

Like even that.

Little madness.

By word for Yeah, just crazy busy.

But I think as a phrase we also use that that particular phrase as an 0.

Really.

Oh, brilliant.

Because I've heard so many people saying it and I mean, it just seemed appropriate so.

Yeah, yeah, Cyril, the character of Cyril, which is the only name that you retain, I think.

Yes, because he's because he's Catholic.

Sure, so so.

Catholics I could keep it.

I think he's a Lobo in mine, which is again bringing the Portuguese touch the.

Surname Yeah, yes, because it's Lee in Rachel Motel's version and he he mentions having a date with TS Eliot in in the Rachel version and in yours it's I can't.

So Rojini Naidu Yes.

Well, actually, you know, I could have.

We could have kept it.

TS Eliot It just seemed like Cyril, the kind of person he is.

I don't know.

Just it felt like I knew Cyril.

Like I definitely met him before.

No, he comes off the page really well.

Yeah, I like Cyril.

And so it just felt for me more in keeping that he would say Surujani Naidu with the.

Who is also a poet and a.

Poet and an activist.

Yeah, so so works very much as an Elliot.

Yeah, which whereas TS Eli just seemed a little bit to like he's gone to, you know, a school that one of the Catholic schools and it just just like it just there's a slight disconnect.

Well, Speaking of poets, there are a few lines of dialogue in the original play, the Rachel Bergstaff play about Kipling and which you retained verbatim in your version, of course, because, I mean, Kipling was born in Mumbai, I think.

Yeah.

He lived in Mumbai I think.

Yeah, yeah.

So that worked completely without any.

Without any, Yeah.

Tennyson works.

So he is very widely read in.

Absolutely, yeah.

And specifically the Lady of Charlotte, would you say that's?

I don't know so much about the Lady of Charlotte, but Parsis and Catholics are the the two kind of sets of Indian society that would be really up on their poetry and they would be really up on their classic, classic literature.

So it just a Parsi woman and a Catholic woman discussing terrorism.

Just seems like, you know, some house party that I normally go to and.

Yeah, yeah.

Granny talking to somebody just.

I guess the the other answer to that question is, well, even if I wanted to, I couldn't change it because like you can't do the miracle.

Yeah, you have to rename it like it's very.

You lucked out that Dennison is.

Totally lucked out.

Still works.

You know I changed the Catherine of Aragon reference.

Oh.

Yes.

But you change it to the story of Sarah, Abraham and Hagar.

Yeah.

I don't know the story.

Bible, that's the one where she says, oh, I don't know if she says it or he says, but she she asked her maid to sleep with her husband to give them a child.

It's the isn't that what the Hamid's Tale is?

Isn't that isn't that related to Hamid's Tale?

But I just thought a biblical story kind of made more sense.

Nothing else seems to have been working.

Oh well, it's Elizabeth.

Of.

It's Elizabeth of Austria I.

Don't.

Know there was a film about Elizabeth of Austria recently, so I do know about her, but I don't it's not as immediately recognisable for a thing to go into audiences.

Catherine Barragan and and Blair.

And I think what works about that in Rachel's version, you have Lola Brewster playing Anne Boleyn, obviously younger and sort of coming up behind Marina, Greg and there being the tensions between the two of them, which works for their characters.

Yeah.

And similarly, I guess, in your change to Sarah, Abraham and Hagar.

She's taking over a role that the other one is no longer able to do.

Yes, yeah, there's there are a few lines you you wrote so Dolly says.

Dolly says to Lola.

Who are you playing?

And Lola says her companion, Sarah's companion.

And Dolly says, oh, the maid.

And then Leela says the Lola character says my character is a bit more than a maid.

And it again, it's that feeling of her sort of coming up.

Because ultimately the the note the play ends on Leela or Lola is sort of patching herself back together and and she survives and she moves on.

Whereas Marina Gregg's arc is, is different.

So yeah, yeah, it worked really well.

That's good.

Good to know.

I'm glad that there's no.

Good, good positive feedback.

Because we do think we'll send the notes on Wednesday.

We weren't.

Did you think we were going to sit you down and criticise?

Well, I I thought, but you know, some when you feel passionately about something like you do, but you both do about Agatha Christie, there would be things that probably jar and you're thinking, well, you know, this hurts When I adapt Dickens, I mean, the things that are said to me is just awful.

Some of it because people cannot bear to have, you know, Dickens being pulled away from what they know it as.

So setting it somewhere else, for instance, is just.

Yeah, it's a thing.

I mean, Mark came, came up through adaptation studies and, and I think we've always said you, you always say, and I certainly agree that the, that the original is always there and it, you know, it takes nothing away from you always say, you know, the more versions the better, essentially.

Like it's always interesting to have a new take.

But also, I mean, I think it makes a real difference when you know that the adapter is coming from a place of really understanding the text, both Rachel Workstuff's version and having a passion for the original for Christie, which you so clearly do.

We'd already seen Rachel's version twice and loved that.

So you were on to a winner.

We weren't going to reprimand you.

John Curran, who's a big authority, Christine, is a bit more conservative with adaptations that he likes than us.

I remember once saying to him, yes, Sir.

John, you'd be only be happy with an adaptation if it was someone stood in front of the camera reading out the book and he said, do you know what?

You're probably wrong.

Yeah.

So what's the point?

You know, it's like it's not an adaptation.

No, the whole point is reshaping it for something else.

Yeah, as we're discussing now, there's so many interesting insights to come out of why was the decision changed to make that?

You know what?

That's where the the metre is.

Yeah.

One potentially controversial addition to Wagstaff's version was the idea that Ella Zelensky, the secretary, was loyal to Marina because there's a romantic sexual motive there, which Marina then plays off by.

You actually see her kissing her on the lips in a flashback.

And you retained all of that, which I was actually a little surprised to see.

Was that controversial?

What was What was your thinking around that?

First, before I answer that, in the original, does Ella have a relationship with the husband?

Oh, I don't think so.

I didn't even hesitate to change it or anything because we, we do.

I mean, there, there are gay people in India, you know that.

I know I was there recently.

I mean, we do.

No, but I mean, sadly, sadly, I, I'm sure that that aspect of Rachel's version has been controversial in certain, certain circles of Agatha Christie fans in this country.

So I'm not, I don't mean.

Oh, I just.

Mean, you know, did you feel like its inclusion was provocative at all or is that?

Well, I suppose because she is a Muslim character in mine that is a little more sort of on the edge of, you know, controversial, but that's life.

I mean, you know, and, and in the theatre we are allowed to say things that are not, not able to say anywhere else in India, especially in India.

I, I think that's important.

And you have so many political figures and newspapers and people who rile against, you know, anything that does not fit with their idea of what India should be.

And a lot of noise is created.

But in theatre you feel relatively safe to say something.

And I think.

It struck me seeing the version that we saw last week, that is what really villainised Marina for me, which is strange to say because obviously she kills three people and is kind of terrible.

But that in particular I think is because because she leads her on so, so fully and Ella's so innocent, that almost hurts more than the fact she was going to poison her.

Yeah, Inhaler explicitly manipulative.

Yeah, maybe it was the way it was played, but it.

Yeah, it did.

So it works in on a narrative level away from just wanting to insert gaze, which is one of the problems that I suppress the adaptations have.

So Hilda or Heather, she's promoted from Saint John Ambulance volunteer.

It's now the heads of Saint Anthony's hospital charity.

So that's like a position in society, a change you.

Yeah.

Like, whereas she could be very overlooked in society when it is in the sort of bag staff and the and the original novel.

Yeah, that elevates her a bit.

Is that was that I didn't I didn't mean to elevate her to be honest.

It's just just I in my head, when I see Goa and I think of the hospitals and I think of ambulances, I just don't see her.

I don't see her in that position.

I see a lot of men, a lot of, I mean, they just look different in my head.

So for me, the person that Hilda is would be, it's a small hospital.

I didn't mean to make her like she's not some sort of, you know, very rich person.

But is that what it sounds?

Like Oh no, no, no.

And again this.

Isn't a criticism.

This is the hospital that I saw in in Goa.

But I was just a friend of mine who was very high and I took him to hospital and he was freaking out.

And so I saw this hospital in my head, and it was a small little place where they just deal with people who are, you know, too high to function.

And.

It goes a bit like that, but sleep.

Now that makes sense that.

Also, just the old lady sits the back.

You know, is tying it into your equivalent of the development, which is that part of that particular subculture and go.

So it does make sense as a translation.

It was just an interesting because I guess.

Yeah, when you say head of a hospital here, it sounds.

It.

Sounds, Yeah, Yeah.

Although it is a charity hospital, isn't it?

You do, Yeah.

You specifically say it's a charity.

So yeah, Yeah.

No, it works.

OK, good.

11 tweak, I thought really worked.

I may be controversial in saying I think it improves on the original If you, if you ask me, I don't know if Mark agrees, but you're go meet your Giuseppe character.

So there's a few lines.

When we introduce him, you say he's Munter's personal assistant and then Colliso says what's the difference between a secretary and a personal assistant, meaning Capri and.

Iram.

Or Ella.

Yeah, and that and Jay, as in Jason Rudd says Iram manages our work.

Gurmeet does everything else.

He's her cook, driver, bodyguard and spot boy all rolled into one.

He'd do her make up and hair if you let him.

And one thing that doesn't work about the English play for me is that Giuseppe is so, so clearly defined as Marina's Butler, but then seems to be butlering on the film set, which, yes, certainly wouldn't be happening in the 60s, but I'm not sure.

Whatever.

I think you would have staff that would be with you in your professional life and then staff that would be responsible for your house.

And that was a change that made sense of his I I could see him clearer.

I understood him better.

And it was a tricky 1 because actually in India you have loads of servants and loads of people doing different things.

So actually in, in, in truth, Mamta would have a whole posse of people, you know, make up this, that and everything.

But I wanted her especially to have this one person who's so devoted to her that he would do every, he would do everything if you gave me a chance.

Obviously she has those people, yes.

But that's in his character, yeah.

That make yeah, so it did you.

Know and to Lance and Elizabeth Taylor don't really share a scene.

They certainly don't share dialogue, but which the play manages to fix quite nicely in having that really quite strong conclusion, because there always feels like there's something a bit missing if you don't get Miss Marple actually meeting the murderer.

Which is why.

But it's important to connect them as well.

Yeah, because of their.

And that's why why yours and Rachel's decision to forefront that maternal threads works because that's what they have in common.

They have very different experiences around that stuff.

But you know what I mean?

That's kind of that's what they have in common.

The tie, the boys and some.

Yeah, I've said this before, but I remember though, when we reread The Mirror Cracked for the podcast, I was really struck by how little Marina is actually physically in it.

And I wonder if the Angela Lansbury film suffers just because of the weight of that from the original book.

And that is something that both these play versions avoid.

Marina is more present in both of them.

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't remember the book actually now because you you go through so many versions or something.

Yeah.

Well, I think you think she's in it more because what you hear about her is really vivid and she is a very memorable character.

There's obviously a lot of skill in the in the way Christie crafts, Yeah, but in terms of actually she's on the page when obviously the the crucial scene with the daiquiris, and then she's not seen again until, I want to say 60.

It's like 50 or 60 pages.

Night falls on her, probably.

Then she's around for that, yeah.

And then she is barely in the end.

Most of that happens off page as well.

It's Jason Rudd.

It's all Jason Rudd sort of reporting back.

So Carmo, the central drug of the story is Mandrax in your version.

And it's we've talked about this at length on the podcast.

It's it's well known in Christie's circles anyway that it's a, it's a fictional drug.

And we've discussed this before because there's a movement in some Christie readership to say that that's kind of her powers failing slightly.

The in the in previous book she's always been able to make real drugs and their actual after effects work, whereas she had to almost resort to making up one for this, which I've debunked at length in our drugs episode.

But what was really interesting about your Mandrax is that you retain the idea that it that it helps you chill out.

But you cut.

So in the English, in the Rachel Wagstaff version, and indeed from the book, they say Carmo peps you up and calms you down and you cut the peps you up.

Now, many critics of the Mirror Cracked say that the reason they don't buy Carmo as in believe it not, it's unavailable.

It's yeah, yeah.

Down the streets on the back alleys.

Yeah.

I'll have some Carmo, please.

The reason they don't believe?

It.

Is because it's sounds like, well, those are two different drugs, one that puts you up, one that comes you down.

Is that why?

Yes.

I see.

I was.

So I was talking to Johnny about this Johnny Biology at uni.

Yeah, I was like, surely you can give me examples of drugs that do both.

Well, he was at different times, Yeah, yeah, different times, first of all, but even.

Even alcohol.

Alcohol, yeah, peps you up to begin with.

The most common drug there is really that it peps you up to goodness and then it knocks you out.

Yeah, sure.

Then get it.

Just, it was just better for our purposes that the drug, yes was only one that calmed you down.

I mean, it was just better for the whole for the piece.

To be fair, you only see in these two play versions.

It's only spoken about being taken when somebody wants to calm down.

Nobody goes, oh, I need energy to get through this party.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like MDMA or something.

It's not that kind of.

I can incentive that narratively it's easy just to go.

That's what it does, especially because we don't, like you say, really see it and.

Especially.

Because calm is in the net.

Exactly.

Yeah, in the other name.

Yeah, and we don't.

Call Peppo and.

We didn't see Hilda sort of like breaking out into dancing.

Well, maybe that's what she does down in the Charity Hospital.

It's just we know the Charity Hospital is hers to do what she likes her.

She's the head, she's the head.

After all.

When she's bringing all the.

People who are high she's.

Taking off of me.

Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll look.

After.

Her, yeah.

So at the end.

She goes off stage to say can I sort my face out before you take me away?

Yes.

And then Jason says can I go and see her?

Yeah.

And the inspect says yes, and then he comes back and it's heavily implied that he assisted me in some way.

Yeah, I think it's.

That you're reading, I mean, what was your thinking, if you can remember?

How involved is it, Jai, your version of Jason, whether how involved he felt that he was with Marina's death?

But also there's a thing that in the Rachel Ragstaff version, Craddick thinks that he is involved some way quite clearly, because he says keep that to yourself.

So he's sort of like, I'm not going to make this a police matter.

We both know what's gone on and that isn't in your no.

You cut that line interest.

So we wondered whether you would.

But in both versions, it's implied that Jason assisted.

Yeah, I mean, but I think it was meant to be because I wanted everyone to come to their own decision on how they felt about it.

Because is.

And yeah, what was going, what was going to happen after this?

Yeah, and.

Keep it more open-ended.

It is.

It is.

It did feel slightly more open-ended than virtual Microsoft's version, I thought.

Yeah.

Like, you know, choose your own ending that sort of choose your own.

Ending so it's interesting because so yeah, there's some discussion We we hosted a book club at the Agatha Christie festival last in September about the miracle from side to side.

And there was a lot of animated discussion there about some readers believe that Jason may have been the one that killed Giuseppe, maybe even Ella and potentially put Marina out of her misery.

Obviously in the in the Rachel version and in your version, Ella is saved by Miss Marple.

But one of the pieces of evidence I've heard cited for as to why it may be Jason that killed Giuseppe is that Giuseppe is shot.

And that is very much a different modus operandi than using the Carmo or the cyanide in the atomiser, which is how the other two are killed.

And presumably Marina is killed by an overdose of Carmo.

I think so is the implication.

But is there a gun presented at what any point?

So in the in the Rachel version, which you retain in yours, you do see a flashback of Marina shooting Go meet.

Yeah.

So that's unambiguously in that.

But yeah, I wondered if you had any thoughts about how much Mumto and I feel.

Like, I feel like I wanted it to be, you know, her pain and suffering coming through in in this way and that.

Actually, Jason is just her, her second husband.

And he loves her but doesn't really quite know how to support her is what I was going with.

And that was all driven.

Like, she's driven to madness.

Really.

Yeah.

With everything that happened.

That's interesting you should say that because I do think one thing that the Jason is more active in the plot than you thought he was argument has against it is that it robs the Marina or the Mamta character of a bit of agency, especially if you're foregrounding the motherhood themes, which you you and Rachel were.

Yeah, I think so.

I think it would depend on what you're sort of focusing on in your interpretation of the of the original.

And in our version, I think Mamta's the one who needed to go to that place.

Yeah, and just a few, there are just a couple of little language changes and choices.

So although this may have changed since the draught we read.

So Cherry Baker, the the joke slash clue is the what a ridiculous name for someone.

Well, it turns out it's not actually her real name.

And in the the version that we read of yours, she's been renamed Chimichurri, which has the same gag essentially, which is the it's because it's it's like a Spanish or Portuguese.

Was that what you were thinking?

Like Portuguese kind of did?

Yeah, well, she has been.

She was renamed in the next draught to Chiki Prasad.

And the reason why that is more perfectly like Cherry Baker is that Chiki is this peanutty kind of thing with jaggery, sweet snack.

And Prasad is what they give you when you go to a temple, which is just like, well, it is kind of sweet and it is has jaggery and all that.

So it's much more like Cherry Baker.

OK, the more literally, but either way, the fact that you've retained you've found a way to make a food stuff the name kind of I know so.

Fun.

I find names so fun.

Well, you can see that kind of love of language and playing with it in other ways as well, such as Denzel, Dermot, the Inspector calling Miss Mystery or Miss Marple.

Auntie, I thought was so perfect, because obviously.

He he calls her auntie in Rachel Wagstaff's version, because there's this whole thing about her being formerly friends of his parents, but also in am I right in saying that in Indian society he would say that as a sort of mark of respect and.

Yeah, no, in India, everyone's auntie.

Anyone who's not your mum is auntie.

So you.

Would.

Say that even to your neighbours.

I mean the fact that they are close is immaterial.

Even if he did not know her, he would be calling her Auntie.

So chummy or chickie.

So the that's Cherry's character calling Miss Mystery Memsab.

Memsab.

Yeah, if you work for somebody then then you call them Madam.

Yeah.

But yeah, so that's and but also there's is there sort of like a like a motherly thing in that, in the, in the.

No, not in Mimsab.

No, No, not in Mimsab.

But that's a very sign of respect.

It's a yeah or Madam G sometimes, yeah.

Is it did I read?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but would you normally use that for a married woman though?

Yes, but it has become a bit generic.

So you would say that to anybody you work for?

Right.

Yeah, but that's kind of extra interesting because, you know, obviously Miss Marple and Miss Mystery, she's famously.

Yeah.

And and her not being married, not having this lover is is made a crucial spine of this version.

This particular story, Miracrat has been adapted quite a few times.

So there have been a couple of Japanese versions for TV.

South Korea's done it for TV Indian films we're saying, as well as course of play version Indian one and the original Rachel Rug stuff.

Do you think is there any particular reason why Miracrat works so well for adaptation?

Because because there are 66, I guess, Christie mystery novels and this one seems to crop up more often than does it your average internationally internationally.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Why do you think that is the case?

I think it's there are so many analogues.

You don't have to.

You don't have to reach too hard to find the parallels, because ultimately it's about different, no?

You sound like it is totally like.

That's so amazing.

She's obviously Muslim.

Find.

And replace, find and replace.

Yeah, OK, I guess there are lots of stratas of society in different cultures.

Exactly.

So therefore that.

And that's the central spine of the piece.

Miss Marple, this is the first, this book in which we hear about the development and that is the the original backdrop.

One of the working titles was the development murder.

It's it's that's the kind of instigator of the idea and that is very, very translatable.

And couple that with fate.

Every culture has an A conception of fame or notoriety BIG.

Part.

I think it's got that really unusual mix of glamour, which is great for adaptation, for screen and stage adaptations from the film studio, but also you get to have your cake and eat it because it's also Saint Mary Mead.

Yeah, You gotta see Mary Me.

Yeah.

We're the Hollywood films or Bollywood films star with the film studio and everything that everyone's coming.

Yeah.

And, and the tension they're in, which is ultimately what makes good storytelling, right?

The the the two poles kind of colliding.

If you watch those, and I won't name them, but perhaps long running mystery shows on TV, how often do they have a story which is a film crew comes to the village?

Maybe that's another then, because it's kind of a staple of the genre now.

I doubt it was when Christine.

But like, it's very interesting.

I mean, outsiders come to your little village.

What happens?

It's almost like a fear of being invaded.

And that happens with the development and with the Bollywood crew.

It's all about change and about, you know, not being able to to not be able to understand what these new things that are coming in are doing to your life.

And I suppose that is what.

And yeah, and about suspicion, which is fundamentally what who done it's and thrillers are built on.

Yeah, perfect recipe to take anywhere in the world.

Well, it's a brilliant version.

It's the Rachel Workshop version is very good and your version is fantastic as well and it really contributes something.

I'm really glad that we were able to talk about this.

Thank you so much.

No thank.

You.

Is there anything that you're working on any way that people might be able to find you, that you'd like us to let people know?

Yeah, so me and my husband have a company called Goldhawk Productions.

You can find us.online@goldhawkproductions.com.

All our dramas there.

We do a lot of thrillers and murder mysteries and those other things we have the most fun with.

And also my podcast Mumbai Crime, where if you like the whole genre then there's Undercover Mumbai which is quite fun little.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

A lot of Christie fans will definitely find a lot to enjoy in that series.

We'll link to those in our episode copy.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Thank.

You.

Ah, thanks again to Aisha for that.

That was fantastic.

She's so clever and brilliant and a great friend.

So we've had a great time metaphorically voyaging to to India, haven't we?

And if you want to hear more episodes like this, then just let us know.

Yes, because you can get in touch.

Our blue sky account is at Christie Time dot B sky dot social.

We're on Instagram at Christie underscore time.

You can e-mail us at christietimeprod@gmail.com.

That's prod for production.

Our website's at Christie Time dot com.

You can find Grey at his website alsogreyrobertbrown.wixsite.com/grey Robert Brown.

And so good they named him twice.

I'm on.

Instagram at Doctor Mark Aldridge and on Blue Sky at markaldridge.info, which is also my website.

And of course, I've got my Marple and Poirot books, which you're more than welcome to seek out if you haven't yet.

Out now.

Out now, yes.

And please do rate and review us and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.

I always say this, but we're independent.

We do it for the love of it.

We are literally just the two of us sat in your office.

My.

Study surrounded by your murder She Wrote merchandise.

So yes, that really helps us out and thank you and bye bye, bye, bye.

Keep swinging well, so.

We've actually done it in time, but we both remembered to do.

It.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Usually.

Thanks for listening my Christy Wallace.

The Swinging Christies is a Christie time project by Doctor Mark Aldridge and Grey Robert Brown.

This episode was recorded on the 18th of January 2025.

Our artwork was designed by Bartlett Studio and our music is by Dark Golan.

This may be a long episode of the podcast.

That's just.

Saying you might have bonuses within bonuses.

Yeah, yeah, an India series.

Why not do?

You know that there was a murder that happened in India that Agatha Christie borrowed from.

People say for that Roger Ayckroyd.

No, it's the first mysterious favourite styles.

Is that the one where the guy is locked in the room and he dies in a hotel room?

Yeah, or something.

Yeah, I think so, Yeah.

I think it's one of those things that has been said like quite a long time after the fact.

There's people like she must have known about this, like the similarity.

Yeah.

There, there were quite a few sort of slightly clickbaity articles about recently, but yeah, I can't say I looked into it particularly.

We have such a tunnel vision with the 60s that it's like, yeah, yeah.

So it comes us about.

Yeah, how dare you.

Oh my goodness.

From the allowed to do that, yeah.

Orient expression and then.

Yeah.