Geraldine McEwan is the new Miss Marple

Geraldine McEwan stars as the new Miss Marple in four ITV1 films. Under the title of Agatha Christie's Marple the series was screened on Sundays in the UK.

Elliot Gould appeared in the second series of Miss Marple recorded in 2005.

There were four films in the first series:

In A Body in the Library a young blonde is found strangled in the library of Gossington Hall and Dolly Bantry calls in her old friend Miss Marple. They soon discover that the dead woman was a dancer from the glamorous Majestic Hotel, and decide to stay at the hotel themselves to investigate.

Some of A Body in the Library was filmed in the Sussex resort town of Eastbourne. Look out for the bandstand, the pier, the town beach, Western Lawns and the Grand Hotel.

Miss Marple - Geraldine McEwan
Conway Jefferson - Ian Richardson
Adelaide Jefferson - Tara Fitzgerald
Dolly Bantry - Joanna Lumley
Colonel Bantry - James Fox
Colonel Melchett - Simon Callow
Supt Harper - Jack Davenport
George Bartlett - David Walliams

Screenplay by Kevin Elyot.

Some scenes for Murder At The Vicarage were filmed in Windsor, best known as the location of one of Queen Elizabeth's castles. One Sunday morning, production staff turned the town into 1950s Melchester. Colonel Protheroe, played by Sir Derek Jacobi, was involved in a near miss with a masked motorcyclist. The colonel would soon be murdered during a visit to the vicarage.

The cast also includes Janet McTeer, Stephen Tompkinson, Herbert Lom, Tim McInnerny, Miriam Margolyes, Rachael Stirling, Jane Asher, Jason Flemyng, Emily Bruni, Mark Gatiss and Robert Powell. Julie Cox (Elsa Greer in Five Little Pigs) plays the young Miss Marple in flashbacks with her beau, the married Captain Ainsworth (Marc Warren), who dies in the first world war. Stephen Churchett plays the coroner and wrote the screenplay.

In 4.50 from Paddington Elspeth McGillicuddy sees a woman in another train being strangled. Was she imagining things? The cast included David Warner, Amanda Holden, Pam Ferris, John Hannah, Celia Imrie, Niamh Cusack and Ben Daniels.

Stephen Churchett had changed the original story in his disappointing screenplay. The film was also marred by weak acting by several of the cast, especially Griff Rhys Jones, an absurd attempt at comedy by Rob Brydon and Rose Keegan trying to be an aristo with a lisp. Neve McIntosh's version of a French accent sounded more like one from eastern Europe.

A Murder Is Announced in the personal columns of the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette. And sure enough the villagers show up at Lettie Blacklock's house to enjoy the party. The room goes dark and a gun is fired, Lettie is injured and the man who fired the gun is dead. If the producers checked the spelling of aspirin after they had finished filming they may have needed a couple of tablets. Geraldine McEwan stars with Claire Skinner, Zoë Wanamaker, Cherie Lunghi, Virginia McKenna and Elaine Paige. Screenplay by Stewart Harcourt.

ITV3 showed repeats of the series in the UK. On the same channel Jenni Falconer introduced Behind the Scenes: Agatha Christie's Marple on 2nd January 2005. This programme included interviews with Geraldine McEwan, Amanda Holden, Niamh Cusack, Ben Daniels, Griff Rhys Jones, Joanna Lumley, Derek Jacobi, Cherie Lunghi and Jack Davenport - as well as scenes from the episodes.

ITV1 showed A Body in the Library again on 26th June 2006.

Geraldine McEwan was 72 when she began filming season one in May 2004. She said: "With Miss Marple I feel that I have been entrusted with a national treasure of whom I already feel both protective and extremely fond." The dramas cost £2 million (almost $4 million) each and were co-productions of the British company Granada, part of ITV plc, and US broadcaster WGBH Boston.

The new Miss Marple has been adapted for ITV1's 21st century viewers. She reveals a touching past relationship with a married man - and one of the films has a lesbian theme. ITV1 introduced a homosexual theme in the Poirot adaptation of Four Little Pigs.

And with the authorisation of Agatha Christie's estate, the producers have even changed the identity of the murderer in one of the mysteries just to confuse those who remember the BBC series or the original book plot.

Geraldine McEwan has starred on TV in Mapp & Lucia as Lucia (Italian pronunciation) and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; and movies Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Henry V.

Joan Hickson, who played Miss Marple in the BBC series, died aged 92 in 1998.