I mentioned last week that At Bertram’s Hotel is one of my favorite Miss Marple stories, period. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for either of the adaptations of the book. Neither sufficiently capture that cozy (yet slightly unsettling) feeling of reading about Bertram’s hotel. Instead of unsettling perfection, we get either unsettling claustrophobia or glamorous drama.

Those writing decisions, baffling as I may find them, do allow us to dig a little deeper into writing choices. What exactly does the BBC do to take an otherwise relatively faithful adaptation and upset the cozy vibe? Which of iTV’s numbers changes land, and why (or why not)? I can take solace at least in the interesting adaptation journey, even if the results are… underwhelming.

BBC: a sigh of frustration

Let’s start with the BBC. As usual, they’ve hewn closely to the source material, with just a few deviations. But oh, how those choices matter. The first difference that matters, and the one that’s most unique to the BBC, is Lady Bess:

Lady Bess – Marple foil?

From the very beginning of the BBC adaptation, the framing and editing set up Miss Marple and Lady Bess in opposition to each other. In the introductory sequence, we see the glamorous Bess deplaning and driving around, as Miss Marple is sedately driven to Bertram’s. It’s hard not to see the two as implicitly in opposition to each other, and this sets up a much more antagonistic and focused story from the start. (The novel, in contrast, opens with a description of the hotel. The focus is on Miss Marple’s experience there, and the other guests are simply characters in the story. Fro this reader, Bess was much less of a clear foil than the BBC framing.)

Of course, setting Bess up this way requires a certain type of glamour and panache from the actress. Unfortunately, this version of Bess did not land from. Bess in the books is effortlessly glamorous, the kind of person you can’t help but want to watch. This version of Bess is much more – ostentatious. When she laughs in the tea room, it seems attention-seeking, not spontaneous. It makes her difficult to admire – or to understand Elvira’s admiration. It’s hard to feel a sense of coziness when the center of the story is quite so unpleasant.

The Marple-ification of the BBC

The BBC commits one of their other cardinal sins here – making sure that every clue Miss Marple finds is one that she went hunting for. Conversations that were merely accidents in the novel become the result of hunting expeditions here. Experiments run by the police come back to Miss Marple for credit. For me, this both reduces the cozy vibe – how cozy is it for your protagonist to hide in corners, eavesdropping? And it reduces Miss Marple’s genius – because she’s inserted herself into the narrative, rather than simply figuring it out as things happen.

In fact, because the death happens so late in the story, changing Miss Marple’s level of agency matters more than usual. Typically, a more empowered Marple simply comes at the expense of the police. Here, you may almost get the sense that, had Miss Marple paid adequate attention, things may have been different. It’s a very different undertone to the story, and one that hurts the overall atmosphere.

iTV: a sigh of anguished confusion

iTV often makes more bold adaptation decisions, and sometimes they pay off rather well. I’ve even said that the bold choices can make for a more accurate adaption from a vibe / theme perspective.

Not this time.

Here we’ve got iTV at their worst, inventing entirely new plot points and mystery elements, simply for the sake of drama. We have shoehorned in (spoilers!) polio, Nazis – and Nazi hunters, twins, Louie Armstrong (!), adultery, and a will reading. Apparently, chance hotel overlaps are so unlikely that we need to invent an entirely new reason for everyone to show up at approximately the same time.

I could try to break down each of these Very Bad Decisions and explain why At Bertram’s Hotel did not, in fact, need a jazz dance scene. Or Nazi hunters, or a ceiling caving in. Each of the additions is more ludicrous than the last, and each pulls the story away from its cozy, observational roots to something a lot more spectacular. It’s almost as if the adaptation team didn’t actually like their source material very much, and wanted to write a totally different story instead. Which, IMO, they’re welcome to do – just don’t call it At Bertram’s Hotel.

Joint decisions

Even though the two adaptations were so different, both made two choices that seem worth exploration for their impacts on the mystery. Specifically – both downgraded the police quite a bit, focusing instead on Miss Marple’s detective work. And both also removed the moral choice for those police at the end of the novel, instead opting for a much more definitive version of the story.

In combination, these decisions make Miss Marple come off as much more of a vigilante than the gentle guide persona she takes on in the books. The incompetence of the police renders her interventions necessary; the moral reaction to the killer renders her instantly vengeful. This Miss Marple uses the police like a tool, rather than working with them – and he knows they will ultimately exact harsh justice on those she finds.

Ineffective police: making Miss Marple a necessary vigilante

We’ll start with the police, which are a consistent source of frustration for me with Miss Marple adaptations. Too often, the police force is somewhat incompetent, presumably to help play up Miss Marple’s intelligence. (A Northern in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent taxonomy…) This is most frustrating when it happens in a story with rather clever police, with whom Miss Marple can partner. It totally shifts the tone of these stories from collaborative to antagonistic, adding an unnecessary layer of tension.

Both the BBC and iTV do this, to differing degrees. Surprisingly, BBC does it less, though it still gives some great police moments to Miss Marple. iTV not only creates a bumbling policeman, they also invent a new clever maid named Jane for Miss Marple to partner with. This addition serves simply to complicate a plot without actually adding to the story or the atmosphere.

As I’ve written before, having competent police in a Miss Marple story usually just serves to highlight her skills. In At Bertram’s Hotel, it also contributes to the cozy vibe that so characterizes the book. And so, creating a dumber police force simply serves to create a more unsettling baseline, one in which Miss Marple must solve the crime herself, as the only agent of justice.

Marple as guide?

This plays right into the conclusion of the story, which is somewhat abrupt and thought provoking in At Bertram’s Hotel. In the novel, Miss Marple solves the crime, and then gives the police a choice of how to handle that information. Because she’s been in partnership with them the whole time, it comes off as a guiding hand from a more experienced sleuth. The police force’s choice shows their moral mettle and gives the sense that they care about truth, not just a face to pin the crime on.

These adaptations, instead, jump straight fro discovery to arrest, as though it’s a foregone conclusion. In fact, at the most critical point of Miss Marple’s agency in the story, they remove it entirely. We go from a Father Brown-esque ending to one that leans towards pure crime procedural. And we shift from Miss Marple as crime-solving guide to Marple as pointer for a vengeful (if dumb) justice system.

A tonal mess

Overall, neither of the adaptations really hits the mark. This is extra-disappointing for me, since this is actually a favorite Marple story. While I recognize that many get frustrated with its meanderings, I kind of love that it expands The Tuesday Club Murders approach, with observational rather than involved Marple. It would have been wonderful to see adaptations that elevated these elements while staying true to that cozy core, but instead we’re left with stories that insist on bringing drama to the wrong elements.

From a writing lessons perspective, I suppose the learning is around the alignment of character with moral themes. In both adaptations, critical choices about the police and their role, along with Miss Marple’s involvement, completely turn around the moral implications of the story. Changing the role of the police perpetuates the story of them as uniformly ineffective – an image that’s generally refuted by the actual series itself. This is the conundrum that Malcolm Gladwell struggles with in his recent lecture, and it’s extra frustrating that the source material has a more diverse approach to police presence that the adaptations unify into a simpler story.

Luckily, the next entry in the series is a fan favorite. One hopes that makes for more accurate adaptations – and less frustration for me. Until next time – stay cozy, and stay curious!