By TANIA PHILLIPS
Partners in Crime,
ABC1, Friday, 8.30pm
WITH a cast headed by Little Britain’s David Walliams and Call The Midwife’s Jessica Raine, this could have been something special.
And maybe it will be, after an uneven and strangely-paced opening episode.
It certainly had its supporters and critics in equal numbers when it screened in the UK earlier this year, but in the end rated well.
This is the latest adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime Series – about the adventures of married couple Tommy (Walliams) and Tuppence (Raine) a married couple suddenly thrust into the world of crime solving.
Originally set and written in the ’20s, and last adapted for television in 1983 with Francesca Annis and James Warwick in the leads, this version has been updated – well, a bit.
This version finds Tommy and Tuppence set in the 1950s against a background of the start of the Cold War.
Tommy is a bumbling, clumsy, accident-prone, unfocused English gentleman with no real way of supporting his family – other than the support of his uncle Major Anthony Carter (played by the Vicar of Dibley’s James Fleet – though it took a few minutes to recognise him!) – who just happens to be the new head of MI5.
His wife Tuppence is a bored housewife with a quick and inquisitive mind. If they set this now, she’d be the bread-winner of the family and he’d be a stay at home dad.
The pair have a chance encounter on a Paris train with a young woman who suddenly disappears, drawing Tuppence and Tommy into a mystery and the world of Russian spies and espionage.
Despite Carter’s repeated attempts to keep them out of it, over the course of three episodes (starting last Friday – but still available on iview) they find themselves in mortal danger as they try and rescue the missing girl and infiltrate the spy gang.
The show has some moments of real tension and Raine is charmingly believable as the inquisitive Tuppence but it just seems to miss the mark.
Walliams’ Tommy is just a little too bumbling and you are never quite sure if he is playing it for laughs or seriously and the spy thing just feels like we are going over old territory and trying just a bit too hard to be interesting.
But despite its shortcomings it still has a charm and the unmistakable mark of Agatha Christie and is sure to find an audience.
– Tania Phillips
