Events take a turn when Daphne's father is shot dead. Detective Inspector Dicks arrives with a single constable, complaining that he is shorthanded because of the hunt for Agatha Christie, and that because of this he must conduct the investigation at the house instead of the police station. It is quickly discovered that they have been gathered together under false pretenses, and Christie changes her story to suit. Mabel is found in possession of the murder weapon and arrested. Dicks reveals to Christie that he knows who she is. He also knows that Daphne shot her father. Christie, having found a vital detail in Florence's diary, tells him she knows who attacked Florence and asks for his help. They spring a trap to get Pamela Rose and her son to admit their involvement. Even after Dicks and others overhear the conversation, the evidence is too thin to convict them, despite there being proof that they wrote a note blackmailing Daphne into planting the gun in Mabel's room. Instead, the others conspire to frame Florence's killers for the murder of Daphne's father.
Moved by Mabel's plea for help and desperate for escape and inspiration, Agatha agrees to try and solve Florence's murder. Taking a leaf from her own book, she lures the suspects to a country retreat on the promise of an inheritance. Then, to mask her disappearance and throw suspicion on her husband, Agatha abandons her car and travels in disguise, meeting Mabel and the would-be-murderers at a neglected mansion.
Parents need to know that Agatha and the Truth of Murder is a mystery that speculates where the famed author Agatha Christie was during an 11-day period when she disappeared in real life. Two murder victims are shown, one with blood streaming down her face and another with a bloody bullet wound in his back. The only other violence is mention of past physical abuse. One mystery involves a same-sex couple, and the only other sexual content is a couple showing mild romantic feelings toward each other. Strong language is rare but includes "f--king" and "d--k." A couple of characters smoke cigarettes, although infrequently.
AGATHA AND THE TRUTH OF MURDER speculates about what happened to famed mystery author Agatha Christie when, in real life, she disappeared for 11 days in 1926. With her marriage on the rocks and a serious case of writer's block, Christie decides to help solve a murder by going undercover at a country estate. She gathers all the suspects under the guise of settling an inheritance. But she may have taken things too far when one of her suspects is himself murdered. When the police get involved, it's only a matter of time before Christie's scheme is uncovered. Can she solve both murders before the jig is up, and get her life and writing together when she gets home?
At the end of the day there were a lot of things that I liked about Agatha and the Truth of Murder. The premise was really interesting combining truth and fiction as Agatha Christie was made into a character trying to solve a mystery similar to the ones she wrote about. The production quality for the TV movie was far better than I was expecting. The acting was quite good and the whole framework of the movie had a lot of promise. Unfortunately the movie was let down by the mystery itself. The mystery is not terrible, but it is just kind of boring as not a whole lot happens in it. Agatha and the Truth of Murder would have been a better movie if it had a stronger mystery.
Agatha and the Truth of Murder is an imaginary tale that weaves together two historically accurate events - the 11-day disappearance of beloved mystery writer Agatha Christie in December 1926 and the true to life murder of one Florence Nightingale Shore, the real life god-daughter of Florence Nightingale who was returning to the UK after a wartime stint as a nurse when she was beaten to death on the train returning home.
Written by Tom Dalton, Agatha and the Truth of Murder imagines that these two events are intertwined, Christie, struggling amidst a raging case of writer's block, her husband's known infidelity, and a pending divorce, enticed into using her literary sleuthing abilities to explore the unsolved murder of Shore by Mabel Rogers (Pippa Haywood, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), Shore's surviving partner who grieves both her loss and the lack of justice in the case.
Pippa Haywood is appropriately impassioned as Mabel Rogers, while Christie's select list of potential suspects in Shore's murder includes Travis Pickford (Blake Harrison, A Very English Scandal), a thief who had potentially targeted Ms. Shore, and Randolph (Tim McInnerney, Outlander), Florence's cousin who struggled with her relationship with Mabel. Ralph Ineson (The Witch) gives the film a needed spark of energy as Detective Inspector DIcks, whose insights prove quite complementary alongside Christie.
This is a format so particular that the film is difficult to review with the general viewer in mind. Whatever your approach, however, there's much to admire. Ruth Bradley is brittle yet sympathetic in the lead (considerably more the latter than Ms Christie was said to be in real life). the supporting cast are all highly capable and the parallels with Christie's own work are wittily drawn. The stately home to which Agatha lures the murder suspects on the pretext that she's a lawyer trying to clarify the proper distribution of an inheritance achieves the perfect blend of elegance and dilapidation, and Marion McCarthy's costumes are exquisite. Though some viewers might find it rather dry, with Mabel's grief displaying itself as obsession rather than something more colourful, there are more emotive subplots, including a delicately sketched romance between two of the suspects and, in accordance with real life events, an exploration of Agatha's difficulties in facing up to the fact that her husband doesn't love her anymore.
It's in the nature of these things that some viewers will correctly place the guilt for Florence's murder straight away, but Dalton doesn't make it easy to be sure, delivering a liberal supply of red herrings. The ending comes with a further twist which calls our expectations of the genre into question and might briefly remind you of one of the more unusual short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, who briefly appears as a character, played by Michael McElhatton.
Agatha and the Truth of Murder was a fun watch and I liked the fictionalised version of what could have happened to Christie. No one will ever know what happened during those 11 days in 1926 but I like the idea of Christie solving a murder over whatever the truth may be.
"No offense, but none of you lot look like the killing type." Vision Films has unveiled the official US trailer for an alternative history drama about crime writer Agatha Christie getting embroiled in a real-life murder case during her 11-day disappearance in 1926. The film is titled Agatha and the Truth of Murder, and originally premiered on TV in the UK in late 2018. It's already available on VOD / Netflix in the US as well. With a script by Tom Dalton (The Pharmacist), set in 1926, the film depicts Agatha Christie investigating the murder of Florence Nightingale's goddaughter and how her involvement in this case then influenced her writing. Ruth Bradley (from Grabbers, "Humans", "Guilt") stars as Agatha Christie, with a cast including Dean Andrews, Bebe Cave, Amelia Dell, Richard Doubleday, Derek Halligan, Blake Harrison, Pippa Haywood, Stacha Hicks, and Ralph Ineson. It looks suitably mysterious and alluring, no doubt.
Agatha Christie (Ruth Bradley), a young mystery writer with her personal life in tatters and her writing in crisis, is commissioned to solve a real-life murder. Assuming a disguise, a trap is set for the suspects, but she soon discovers that this killer is more cunning and dangerous than her fictional creations. Agatha and the Truth of Murder is directed by Irish filmmaker Terry Loane, director of the film Mickybo and Me previously, as well as a few short films and TV work including episodes of "Millie Inbetween". The script is written by Tom Dalton. Produced by Brett Wilson. This originally premiered on Channel 5 in the UK in late 2018. It also opened in most of Europe last year. Vision Films has already released Loane's Agatha and the Truth of Murder earlier this year on VOD - it's also available on Netflix. Anyone interested in watching it?
Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar, which will air later this year, sees author Agatha Christie travel to the deserts of Iraq in the late 1920s for an archaeological dig where she unravels a series of mysterious murders. Agatha and the Death of X is set in the Blitz in 1940s London, as the author decides she must kill off her most famous creation, and in doing so, becomes a target herself.
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