Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

gridoon2018 Although I wouldn't classify "A Pocketfull Of Rye" as one of Agatha Christie's best stories, it still keeps your interest; there is a variation on the "ABC Murders" theme (the killer hiding the one and only murder that is important to him / her among a series of seemingly related murders), and a pretty clever solution to the problem of "murder via long distance"! I must admit that my favorite part of this film is by far Selina Cadell as Mary Dove, the efficient housekeeper. Smart, sarcastic, observant - she is the thinking man's ideal wife. I particularly loved the scene where she confesses to some "minor discrepancies in the home accounting"! I just wish she had more to do in the second half. Second favorite is Fabia Drake as Miss Henderson, who has some of the best lines: "I have ALWAYS been very peculiar" and "The journey between Vice and Evil is but a step". And third favorite is Tom Wilkinson as Inspector Neele, a likable, level-headed fellow who is quicker to appreciate the value of Miss Marple's contributions than a certain Inspector Slack! (***)

Iain-215 This is one of my favourites of the Hickson Miss Marple series. Miss Marple is alerted to goings on at Yew Tree Lodge by an ex maid, Gladys but by the time she gets there, there have been three murders already including Gladys herself! The nursery rhyme of the title is largely irrelevant but the story is well plotted and the conclusion satisfying. I don't feel enough is made of the plight of the pathetic Gladys - the book does this so much more effectively and you really end up hating the murderer as a result but apart from that it's pretty good. The cast here is generally excellent. Tom Wilkinson is one of the better accompanying detectives and there are good turns from Stacy Dorning as the airhead second wife, Rachel Bell as the childlike Jennifer and Peter Davison as the charming Lance. Miss Marple finds a kindred spirit in the formidable Miss Henderson of Fabia Drake. My favourite though is Selina Cadell's Mary Dove - exactly as I pictured her in the book! A satisfying mid series entry.

Neil Doyle JOAN HICKSON was an excellent Jane Marple and this is definitely one of the better TV works of Agatha Christie's A POCKET FULL OF RYE. The clever plotting uses a nursery rhyme (one of Christie's favorite ways of linking a complex set of clues to a murder), and gives a nice assortment of suspicious characters a chance to make the perfect sort of red herrings.The mystery gets underway as soon as Rex Fortescue is killed. He's a rich, nasty old man who has a fortune tied to some nasty business in his past, and enough enemies to make everyone a likely suspect. Crisply acted and played in elegant British fashion by an assortment of reliable British supporting players, it keeps you interested in solving the crime along with the baffled inspector, who is no match for Miss Marple.Hickson is perfectly cast as the wise old lady and makes the character seem as though Christie had her in mind for the role.

jandesimpson I recall a British TV series some years back entitled "J'Accuse" the purpose of which was to demolish certain popular sacred cows. They were programmes designed to delight of infuriate according to the predilections of the viewer. From my point of view I was in agreement with the treatment given to "Citizen Kane" but when it came to Laurence Olivier and Agatha Christie, definitely "Non!". As a youngster I devoured practically everything Dame Agatha produced and she remains to this day for my money the absolute mistress of the surprise "Who dun it" particularly when many of the more recent exponents of the genre are running to works of near Dickensian length. Christie needed little more than 200 pages for each of her superb plots, ideal when all you are looking for is a half-day divertissement rather than a complex literary work. For many years her novels seemed to defy good cinematic adaptation. The Rene Clair version of "Ten Little Niggers" worked reasonably well as it had a good cast, bags of atmosphere and stayed fairly true to the book. But then it was remade a couple of times in more exotic locations with disastrous results, the essential ingredient of claustrophobia missing. That was the trouble, Agatha was quintessentially English and cosy with little pretensions to humour. Attempt to make her funny and you have those dire Margaret Rutherford - Miss Marple films that have dated to the extent of becoming excruciatingly embarrassing. Several actors have tackled Poirot with varying results but perhaps it is the very unreality and quirkiness of the character that make the part so difficult to play. Certainly David Suchet is more watchable than Ustinov, Finney and Molina. Miss Marple is a different matter. It just needed to find that someone who could convey the frailty of an elderly spinster with a razor sharp mind that could detect evil in the most unlikely. No wonder that the hammy humour of the well-built Rutherford was so wide of the mark. Angela Lansbury got much closer in the star-studded "The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side", so much so that it seemed that a passable Marple had been discovered. But the film was a one-off and it was only in retrospect after the casting of Joan Hickson in the TV series of the 'eighties and early 'nineties that one realised that Lansbury was not quite right for the part. Hickson however was another matter, casting so inspired that it seemed that she had been waiting all her life of mainly bit-parts as crotchety landladies and barmaids for a role she was just born to play. (See my comments on the 1999 TV adaptation of "David Copperfield" where much the same thing happened for several British stars.) It is the absolute rightness of Hickson in the Marple role that makes this series of twelve easily the best visualisations of Christie's work, that and their faithful recreations of their author's time and place. "A Pocket Full of Rye" is very typical being somewhere between what was easily the best - the brilliantly plotted "A Murder is Announced" with some wonderful supporting roles - and the weakest - "They do it with Mirrors" - where the plot is much less interesting than usual. It enjoys that favourite Christie device of a series of deaths linked with the events of a nursery rhyme, the motivation of money which features in well over half her stories and a plot in which what happens in the present has its roots deeply embedded in the past. It is this latter feature that links her work to that of the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In both practically everything of significance has happened years before the curtain rises. The past therefore has to be explored in order to explain the present. No wonder that it needed a Miss Marple with the attributes of one who seems to be quietly ferreting away in the background to discover past secrets to make the character absolutely credible. It cannot be done through caricature as Joan Hickson so admirably realised.