“Magpie Murders” is a Mystery Inside a Mystery
-
Christina Zeiders
Watch Magpie Murders on WITF TV or the PBS Video app Sundays at 9pm starting October 16 through November 20. Episodes can be streamed for free for 12 days. After 12 days, the episodes move to WITF Passport.
A dead mystery author, an incomplete manuscript, and suspects galore. This juicy setup for Anthony Horowitz’s (Foyle’s War) bestselling novel, Magpie Murders, is coming to MASTERPIECE in an adaptation written by Horowitz himself.
“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.”
The show’s six captivating episodes will broadcast on WITF TV and the PBS Video app Sundays at 9pm starting on October 16.
Magpie Murders stars Lesley Manville (The Crown, Phantom Thread) as Susan Ryeland, longtime editor of the ornery author Alan Conway – played by Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones). Alan has come to resent Susan for her heavy editorial hand, blaming her for channeling his energy into creating compulsively readable whodunits instead of serious literature.
Her efforts had, however, made him a very wealthy man.
Nick Wall / Eleventh Hour Films
Lesley Manville as Susan Ryeland and Timothy McMullan as Atticus Pünd.
Tim McMullan (The Crown, Patrick Melrose) plays Atticus Pünd, the Poirot-like hero of the fictional mystery series penned by Alan, and Michael Maloney (The Crown) is Alan’s publisher, Charles Clover. Alexandros Logothetis (The Durrells in Corfu) costars as Susan’s lover Andreas, and Claire Rushbrook (Sherwood) as her suburban sister, Katie.
The mystery begins when Alan dies under suspicious circumstances shortly after turning in his latest Atticus Pünd blockbuster. Plus, the manuscript is missing its crucial last chapter! Since Charles is negotiating the sale of 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.
Viewers are presented with two mysteries: What happened to Alan, and what happens in the last chapter of his new book, titled Magpie Murders? Susan informally leads the first investigation, taking place in the here and now. Meanwhile, Atticus and the characters in Alan’s novel enact a separate mystery plot, set in 1955.
In a clever blending of past and present – and fact and fiction – some characters in Susan’s world are portrayed by the same actors in Atticus’s world. That’s because Alan wrote thinly disguised real people into his books, usually to even scores.
Nick Wall / Eleventh Hour Films
Matthew Beard, Timothy McMullan, Director Peter Cattaneo, and Lesley Manville.
Daniel Mays (Line of Duty) is 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 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).
Could his story hint at the author’s real-life killer?
“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.”
Plus, there’s one final mystery – Alan vehemently insists that the title of his book is Magpie Murders, not The Magpie Murders. Could that be a clue?
Watch Magpie Murders on WITF TV or the PBS Video app Sundays at 9pm starting October 16 through November 20. Episodes can be streamed for free through the PBS Video app for 12 days after they premiere on television. After 12 days, viewers can watch with a WITF Passport membership.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
