Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

mweratcliffe I would vote lower and say that this was awful- however the acting and much of the production was excellent. Where this effort goes off track with me is the title Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution. It may have been based on or inspired by - but it is defiantly not her story. Miss Christie's story focused on the mystery surrounding the truth about whether or not a man had committed murder and just exactly who was telling the truth. This production focuses on a solicitor grieving the death of his son and how because of that grief he deluded himself into believing lies on all fronts. His delusions result in the freeing of the guilty the death of the innocent and even to his own suicide. This is a completely different story. Not a bad story but certainly one that did not require the complete bastardization of Miss Christie's original work to tell. Any effort that could have been made by the BBC to not delude the audience that this is Miss Christie's story would have been a help to this story - but the BBC chose not to make any effort in order to capitalize on the Christie name and draw an audience. Shame on the BBC. Badly done.

Khun Kru Mark In a new first for the BBC, this gloomy version of the 'Witness' story was filmed entirely through a bottle of Heineken. There's more verde here than a handkerchief full of Kermit's snot! The director clearly misunderstood the meaning for 'green screen'! 'Atmospheric', in this hideous two-parter, simply means 'dreary'!But that's not the only crime... the sound effects are about as subtle as a cookery class with a bloke named Gordon! When a candle is ignited in a dark alley, you'll think your gas oven has exploded! Every footstep is a clap of thunder, too. You'll be left thinking that this was primarily executed as either an audio book for the blind or a school play for the hard of hearing!The actors do what they can to chew through this (supposedly) Agatha Christie tale, but only the amazing David Haig really makes an impact. The cast is handicapped by a terrible, two-dimensional screenplay which insists on wheeling out unsubtle and clichéd characters onto the screen. The ailing character of John Mayhew (Toby Jones) spends much of the time coughing up blood and after half an hour or so, you'll feel compelled to join him.Go and see the Billy Wilder version with Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich and Elsa Lanchester made 60 years prior. It's a million times better than this joyless stinker.

TheLittleSongbird Can definitely see the polarising opinions, the virtues being brought up are understandable and every bit as understandable are the complaints.Of the adaptations of 'Witness for the Prosecution' it is this 2016 adaptation that fares the weakest, despite being closer to the short story than the play it is not a patch on the brilliant 1957 Billy Wilder film. Also preferred the 1982 version. It is not awful, and there are worse Agatha Christie adaptations around, a most notable recent example being 'Partners in Crime' with a woefully miscast David Walliams. But after being so impressed by 2015's 'And Then There Were None', I was honestly expecting much more.There are strong things here. Apart from going overboard on the grimness sometimes, particularly in the first half, 'Witness for the Prosecution' is very pleasing to look at, being beautifully shot and with costume and set design that are both handsome and evocative. The music is unobtrusive but still has a presence.Parts of the storytelling are very compelling, the whodunit and legal stuff is mostly quite riveting, while the conflict of WWI is powerfully evoked and the relationship between Mayhew and his wife having moments of tender pathos. There are some great twists, especially the very clever (though the one of the 1957 film had more edge) final reveal.'Witness for the Prosecution' benefits from a great cast as well. A brilliant performance from Toby Jones is particularly note-worthy, and more than up to his level are Andrea Riseborough, who captivates in bringing an enigmatic quality to a character that you are not sure whether to trust or not. Billy Howle's performance is enough to make one convinced of his innocence. David Haig and Tim McMullan excel as morally devious barristers, as does a venomous Monica Dolan and a touchingly subtle Hayley Carmichael. Kim Catrall is luxury casting, and is a dream.It is a real shame however that 'Witness for the Prosecution' is let down significantly by pacing issues, especially for a lot of the first half, which takes too long to set up with scenes that feel over-stretched and go on longer than needed, and the seemingly endless and melodramatic stuff after the final reveal, like there was an indecisiveness as to how to end it. The second half is more gripping and better paced, but again the pace does drag and scenes and subplots feel like padded filler.Really it would have been better to do 'Witness for the Prosecution' as a one off lasting an hour or something, because the story just doesn't feel long enough to sustain two hour long episodes. So it felt like there was too much padding and stretching in an attempt to sustain it. There is stuff included to give the story a darker tone, but it did feel too often too gratuitously grim and anachronistic, and over-darkened and overshadowed a story that didn't need it.A few scenes between Mayhew and his wife, despite some tender pathos in others and great chemistry between Jones and Carmichael, felt soapy and overwritten, and personally am another person who found the sex scene unnecessary and in poor taste.Concluding this review, not an awful adaptation and production, not as bad as said by some, but could have been much better and comes off as uneven. 6/10 Bethany Cox

tr91 I haven't read the original from Agatha Christie, nor have I seen any other adaptations there might have been before this so I had no idea how the story was going to play out. Following the success last year of And Then There Were None, I was very much looking forward to this years BBC adaptation. I find that when shows like this are shown over consecutive nights rather than weeks, it's much easier to follow. It's easier to get more involved in the world on screen whereas sometimes when a show is weekly you may forget key parts (especially, if like me you watch a large variety of different things). I had read a few reviews and comments from various sources of social media and there seems to be a lot of complaints about the sex scene and also the green mist, with people claiming they struggled to see what was going on. I personally found the picture to be perfect and the green mist gave the show a real gloomy atmosphere. The story was intriguing with plenty of twists and turns over the two episodes. The acting from all the cast was very strong also, Andrea Riseborough in particular was impressive yet again. The 1st episode was excellent and really set up the 2nd episode nicely. It kept me guessing all the way through. There was a slight lull in the 2nd episode but towards the end when the main reveal happened I was left satisfied with how it all turned out. Overall a strong mini series that is well worth catching up on if you missed it. Highly recommend and I'm hoping that there is more of this type of drama to come in the near future.