MURDER IS EASY (2024)

Set in 1954, MURDER IS EASY is a two-part mystery on Brit Box about a Nigerian diplomat who gets caught up in a string of strange deaths taking place among prominent members of an idyllic English town. Based on a 1939 Agatha Christie novel featuring a retired British detective, MURDER IS EASY is a fine production with serviceable performances and notably free of vulgar content and extreme violence, but it’s too lackluster and sometimes odd and doesn’t always make sense.

A young African landowner and diplomat away from his home in Nigeria, Luke Fitzwilliam boards a train with an elderly woman, Mrs. Pinkerton. She shares that there have been several suspicious deaths in her small village, Wychwood Under Ashe. She’s traveling to Scotland Yard to reveal the murderer’s identity to the police. However, she first wants to place a bet at the local Derby horse race. As might be expected, she never makes it to the Yard.

Having failed to give the name of her suspect to Fitzwilliam before she died, Luke feels responsible to find her killer and to stop the string of murders plaguing Wychwood. In the village, he befriends a young woman, Brigid, who’s engaged to marry the town bigwig. Brigid turns out to be an enthusiastic ally in his investigations. She helps Luke navigate the local culture and gives him a woman’s perspective. However, can this unlikely detecting duo uncover the subtleties of this quiet little town where it seems MURDER IS not only EASY bit also more and more prevalent?

This production of MURDER IS EASY is a fine one, with serviceable performances on all sides. However, there are many plot elements that are frankly odd and left unaccounted for in the story. This makes for a strange and lackluster viewing experience. For example, Luke’s recurring dream sequence of being lost in the woods, holding and dropping an African totem, and it catching fire, is left almost totally unexplained. One is left wondering why these several sequences were even there. The protagonist seems unphased by these odd elements, though the same can’t be said for the baffled audience.

Also, the character of the male lead, Luke Fitzwilliam, is unaccountably changed to an African rather than a British policeman coming home from India, as he is in Christie’s novel. This politically correct move would be less off-putting if any of the African elements imposed on the original novel actually mattered to the plot. It’s also hard to imagine, given the creative team’s choice to change Luke to an African diplomat and landowner from a British policeman, that the people of Wychwood don’t question Luke’s actions more. They are silent as he asks questions only the police would ask and ready to cooperate when he accuses some to their faces. The identity of the killer also doesn’t quite seem to make sense. [SPOILER FOLLOWS] Finally, Fitzwilliam and Brigid don’t get married as they do in the novel. Instead, the filmmakers settle for a stale and unsatisfying feminism where Brigid goes off to pursue who knows what and saying, “It’s 1954. Women can do whatever they want to.” All in all, MURDER IS EASY is rather a confusing let down.

MURDER IS EASY has a strong moral worldview. The hero seeks to save the lives of many people by finding the identity of a serial killer. Thus, he’s a principled, determined man seeking the truth, as are the main female characters, Mrs. Pinkerton and Ms. Brigid. The movie is notably free of foul language and other crude or lewd content. Also, the sequences and images involving serial killer’s victims are brief and usually subdued. Though there are politically correct and feminist elements present, the problems with MURDER IS EASY lie more in its cinematic awkwardness than in its philosophy.