Finished watching Why Didn't They Ask Evans? It threw me off. I don't recall that Miss Marple was in the book. Apparently the writer had to weave her in. I also do not recall that mouse and reptile collection.

More scenes with knitting work that doesn't seem to progress, and, apparently, Miss Marple doesn't knit for speed because her work is never close to the tips of her needles. She may not even have been aware of what she was knitting at all. For all I know she was knitting tension swatches.

In this version, scenes and locations are compressed for economy. A lot of outdoor sequences are taken indoors. There are few locations, certainly a lot less than in the book. The original was fast-paced and action-filled like an espionage novel. And, sadly, the woman who plays Frankie does not look aristocratic. It is, however, understandably difficult to find the right performers for such characters.

Those hideous acrylic portraits trying to pass for antique oils shouldn't have been given close-ups. They look like early David Hockneys, like, when Hockney was 16. The least the production designer could have done was have them varnished and heated.

This episode ends like a cheap melodrama, with everyone converging in one location for the final unraveling of the mystery. Not to mention those jaded, delaying tactics used to prevent one of the antagonists from jabbing that venom-filled syringe into her victim's arm (even when the victim begged and pleaded with her not not to do so but to do so!), which should be parodied in a Scary Movie sequel. And I do have one question there, why does snake venom have to be colored fennel green ever since Walt Disney's invention of it in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty? The only saving factors were those gorgeous, gold-embroidered-on red-satin dragon pillows, which, I am delighted to say, were shown in more than one sequence, the exquisite necklaces, and the performer who plays Bobby, who is a dead ringer for a young James Franco.

The moral of such disrespectful productions is that every producer should KNOW that there are loyal and intelligent Agatha Christie fans out there, including countries outside the UK, who remember not only Dame Agatha Christie but also the works she left behind.