Lifeless. Boring. Dull. Awkward. Disjointed.Bad directing, acting, casting, editing, music. Colorless, ugly buildings and backdrops. The actors have even less life in them. Not to mention Joan Hickson's lisp. They can't finish a scene in this episode without jumping to 4 or 5 others first. David Horovitz's interpretation of Inspector Slack is one dimensional- he's just abominably rude to everyone with no zeal or enthusiasm for his work.Utter tripe. Try Geraldine McEwan's version; at least it won't put you to sleep.

I really enjoyed this adaptation of "The Murder at the Vicarage". It is not as good as the delightful "A Murder is Announced" but it is very enjoyable, and not only one of the better Joan Hickson adaptations, but a considerable improvement over the Geraldine McEwan version(though that was one of the better adaptations of that series I feel). The pace is solid, the pace was a problem I had with "They Do it With Mirrors" which is my least favourite of the series, and the story is well structured. There is a nice witty script and lovely production values. The acting is very good in general, the only weaknesses for me being that James Hazeldine underplaying his role of Lawrence Redding and Polly Adams a little too stiff as Anne. Joan Hickson really makes this work though, with a simple charm and wisdom she is for me the best Miss Marple, and out of the supporting cast I loved Cheryl Campbell as Griselda, a delightful performance from a great actress. I liked the music too, really pleasant to listen to. Overall, I really enjoyed this adaptation. 9/10 Bethany Cox

The first 20-30 minutes of "The Murder At The Vicarage" are quite poorly done: a collection of random characters are seen walking and talking without having been properly introduced to the viewer, which, coupled with some heavy accents, makes the story difficult to follow for anyone who has not read the book. The lack of any familiar faces in the cast does not help, either; several of the women are so similar in appearance it's sometimes hard to even distinguish who is who. And there are important characters (like Lawrence Redding, for example) who get no more than 3 or 4 scenes in the entire film. The direction is uninspired, to put it kindly. Things improve a little in the last 20 minutes, when Miss Marple devises a trap for the killer, but on the whole this is definitely one of the weakest Agatha Christie films I have seen so far (though the recent French "By The Pricking Of My Thumbs" remains the worst). (*1/2)

It is difficult to understand ITV's decision to remake the Miss Marple series, because in Joan Hickson we have the definitive interpretation of Agatha Christie's amateur sleuth. This particular story, Miss Marple's first fictional outing,dates from 1930, but the writer, T.R. Bowen has skilfully updated it to the 1950s. The script is witty and the cast is endowed with such acting stalwarts as Paul Eddington and Rosalie Crutchley. If the plot does not seem so original now it is because Christie's work was so often copied, and what must have seemed innovative in 1930 now appears to be hackneyed. All that said it is a story well told and worth a couple of hours of anyone's time.