Communiqué
“It’s a sort of a whodunit inside a whodunit” in this twisty mystery series. “Magpie Murders” on MASTERPIECE – Aug. 11 at 9 pm
< < Back to its-a-sort-of-a-whodunit-inside-a-whodunit-in-this-twisty-mystery-series-magpie-murders-on-masterpiece-aug-11-at-9-pmThe mysteries multiply
“Magpie Murders” on MASTERPIECE
Lesley Manville stars in Anthony Horowitz’s adaptation of his thrilling, bestselling novel
Parts one and two air back-to-back, Sunday, August 11 at 9 :00 pm and 10:00 pm
A dead mystery author. An incomplete manuscript. Suspects galore. This juicy setup for Anthony Horowitz’s (Foyle’s War) bestselling novel, Magpie Murders, is coming to MASTERPIECE in an adaptation by Horowitz himself starring Academy Award®-nominee Lesley Manville (The Crown, Phantom Thread). Magpie Murders airs in six spellbinding episodes on WOUB.
Critics were transfixed during the show’s UK broadcast. “A satisfying dose of armchair detective fun,” applauded The Guardian. “Yikes, this is excellent,” raved The Times. And The Telegraph was dazzled: “In a grey TV landscape crammed with humdrum whodunits, Magpie Murders is a splash of vivid color.”
© Eleventh Hour Films
“There’s never been a TV mystery like this,” notes MASTERPIECE Executive Producer Susanne Simpson. “Anthony Horowitz weaves together a real world with an imaginary one, giving viewers multiple murders to solve and keeping them guessing right up to the end.” MASTERPIECE is presented on PBS by GBH Boston.
Jill Green, Executive Producer for Eleventh Hour Films says, “Nothing else like this has ever been done in the world of murder mystery—it’s ingenious and playful at the same time.”
“I am so happy with this wonderful production of my novel—and audiences have loved it,” says Horowitz.
Also starring is Tim McMullan (The Crown, Patrick Melrose) as Atticus Pünd, the Poirot-like hero of the fictional series penned by irascible author Alan Conway, played by Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones). Michael Maloney (The Crown) is Alan’s astute publisher, Charles Clover. And Lesley Manville is Alan’s longtime editor, Susan Ryeland, who has thwarted his ambition to compose great literature, channeling his talents into compulsively readable whodunits. A very wealthy man, Alan nonetheless resents Susan’s heavy editorial hand.
Alexandros Logothetis (The Durrells in Corfu) costars as Susan’s Greek- teaching lover, Andreas; and Claire Rushbrook (Sherwood) is her suburban sister, Katie. Both Katie and Andreas knew Alan when he was a poor instructor at a private school with unlikely dreams of becoming a published author. Little did anyone know…
© Eleventh Hour Films
But shortly after turning in his latest Atticus Pünd blockbuster, Alan dies under suspicious circumstances. Plus the manuscript is missing its crucial last chapter! Since Charles is in negotiations to sell his publishing company, and Alan is its greatest asset, financial ruin looms for both Charles and Susan, who is in line to become the next CEO, if she chooses.
Thus, Magpie Murders presents two mysteries: What happened to Alan, and what happens in the last chapter of his new book, titled Magpie Murders? Susan informally heads the first investigation, taking place in the here and now. Meanwhile, Pünd and the characters in Alan’s novel enact a separate mystery plot, set in 1955.
In a clever blending of present and past, fact and fiction, some of the characters in Susan’s world are portrayed by the same actors in Pünd’s. This is because Alan wrote thinly disguised real people into his books, usually to even scores. Therefore, Daniel Mays (Line of Duty) doubles as Detective Superintendent Locke in Susan’s world and the dull-witted D.I. Chubb in Pünd’s. Matthew Beard (Vienna Blood) is Alan’s lover, James Taylor, and also Pünd’s slow-on-the-uptake sidekick, James Fraser. Pippa Haywood (Mr. Selfridge) is Alan’s underachieving sister, Claire, as well as the resentful Clarissa, sister of the brutally murdered Sir Magnus Pye (Lorcan Cranitch, Trigger Point).
“It’s like solving two puzzles,” says MASTERPIECE’s Simpson, “and Anthony and the director, Peter Cattaneo (two-time Academy Award®-nominee for The Full Monty and Dear Rosie), pull it off brilliantly.”
One final mystery: Alan vehemently insists that the title of his book is Magpie Murders, not The Magpie Murders. Could that be a clue?