The Mirror Crack'd (1980)

A Hollywood production sweeps into St Mary Mead and brings with it highly-strung celebrity A-lister Marina Gregg (Elizabeth Taylor), her arm-candy husband (Rock Hudson), their entourage of secretaries and house people and production staff and, among them, a murderer, and it is up to Angela Lansbury's terrible Miss Marple, an American-accented beanpole covered in cobwebs, to solve the poisoning cases central to Agatha Christie's classic mystery.

★★★☆☆

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Miss Marple: 4.50 To Paddington (1987)

I like these BBC adaptations of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries, including this particular one based on What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw, because I like the opening credit titlecards and the jaunty Antiques Roadshow music that kicks in every time a body or scandal or an excuse to have a cup of tea turns up, and I especially like the 80-something Joan Hickson's Miss Marple, THE Miss Marple in my mind, who here enlists a young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe Manor to investigate a claim that a woman was strangled on a nearby train.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS