The Future of Agatha Christie's Marple

©ITV

UPDATE FEBRUARY 2014: There will not be another series of Marple. 

The sixth series of Agatha Christie's Marple ended in December and there has still been no official confirmation on whether there will be anymore films starring Julia McKenzie as  the title role. The series started back in 2004, when Geraldine McEwan played the role, but after she retired, Julia McKenzie took over. McKenzie has played Miss Marple in 11 film, since 2009, but will she get the chance to do anymore?

For me, Julia McKenzie is the best Miss Marple, she has really made the role her own. So it would be a great shame if she were to stop now. I read somwhere that she had a contract for three lots of films, and she has now done this. So if Marple were to return, she would have to sign a new contract. It's really make it or break it time, but I hope that as there will be no more Poirot films, the production company will want to keep going with Marple for a bit longer.

The following are some ideas of what ITV could do, should there be a seventh series.



Novels
All of the original Miss Marple novels have either been filmed with Geraldine McEwan or Julia McKenzie. However, I think that the best way forward would be to class  the McEwan stories and McKenzie stories as entirely different series', like the BBC Joan Hickson series. That way, they could go back and film some of the earlier Marple novels like The Body in the Library. This would be good because back in 2004 when the series first began, ITV picked the best and most famous Marple novels to film first, so Julia  has missed out on some of the great ones and got stuck with the short straw. Also, some of the past adaptions have been so awful, like Nemesis, so if they were re-filmed properly nobody would notice anyway. Nemesis should also be filmed again because they have only recently done the prequel novel A Caribbean Mystery, so it would make more sense to do it again in chronological order.

My choices

Short Stories

There are still plenty of Miss Marple short stories left and past episodes based on them have proved they make good adaptions. They could always combine two stories into one 90 minute film or do a Poirot style  50 minute episodes on all of them individually. Sanctuary would work well, as would the Tape Measure Murder and The Idol House of Astarte. This could be a good way of getting some recurring characters together, like Joanna Lumley as Dolly Bantry and Donald Sinden as Sir Henry Clithering, and we could have Raymond as well.

Non - Marple novels

There are still some non-Marple novels still left unfilmed, but I think that filming these as Marple films should be a last resort. Some of the past films where Miss Marple has been inserted have worked quite well, like The Pale Horse and Endless Night, but others not, like Why Didn't They Ask Evans.  Sparkling Cyanide could work well.



My List for Series 7

If I could decide the line-up for series 7, these would be the stories I would have:

• They Came to Baghdad 
• Sparkling Cyanide 
• Nemesis 

If you have any ideas, post yours in the comments section or tweet me at @AChristieWeb. I will post your ideas.

As promised, here are some of your ideas for a Marple Series 7: 

Kevin Lam 

• The Tape Measure Murder 
• Witness For The Prosecution 
• At Bertram's Hotel 
• Crooked House