We are so excited for Magpie Murders on PBS! It doesn’t start until October, but that’s just around the corner, right? The First Look Trailer is out now (it’s below), and here’s what the good folks at PBS have to say about the show…
A dead mystery author. An incomplete manuscript. Suspects galore. This juicy setup for Anthony Horowitz’s (Foyle’s War) bestselling novel, Magpie Murders, is coming to MASTERPIECE in an adaptation by Horowitz himself starring Academy Award®-nominee Lesley Manville (The Crown, Phantom Thread). Magpie Murders airs in six spellbinding episodes, Sundays, October 16 – November 20, 2022 at 9/8c on PBS.
Critics were transfixed during the show’s UK broadcast. “A satisfying dose of armchair detective fun,” applauded The Guardian. “Yikes, this is excellent,” raved The Times. And The Telegraph was dazzled: “In a grey TV landscape crammed with humdrum whodunits, Magpie Murders is a splash of vivid color.”
“There’s never been a TV mystery like this,” notes MASTERPIECE Executive Producer Susanne Simpson. “Anthony Horowitz weaves together a real world with an imaginary one, giving viewers multiple murders to solve and keeping them guessing right up to the end.” MASTERPIECE is presented on PBS by GBH Boston.
Jill Green, Executive Producer for Eleventh Hour Films says, “Nothing else like this has ever been done in the world of murder mystery—it’s ingenious and playful at the same time.”
“I am so happy with this wonderful production of my novel—and audiences have loved it,” says Horowitz.
Also starring is Tim McMullan (The Crown, Patrick Melrose) as Atticus Pünd, the Poirot-like hero of the fictional series penned by irascible author Alan Conway, played by Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones). Michael Maloney (The Crown) is Alan’s astute publisher, Charles Clover. And Lesley Manville is Alan’s longtime editor, Susan Ryeland, who has thwarted his ambition to compose great literature, channeling his talents into compulsively readable whodunits. A very wealthy man, Alan nonetheless resents Susan’s heavy editorial hand.
Alexandros Logothetis (The Durrells in Corfu) costars as Susan’s Greekteaching lover, Andreas; and Claire Rushbrook (Sherwood) is her suburban sister, Katie. Both Katie and Andreas knew Alan when he was a poor instructor at a private school with unlikely dreams of becoming a published author. Little did anyone know…
But shortly after turning in his latest Atticus Pünd blockbuster, Alan dies under suspicious circumstances. Plus the manuscript is missing its crucial last chapter! Since Charles is in negotiations to sell his publishing company, and Alan is its greatest asset, financial ruin looms for both Charles and Susan, who is in line to become the next CEO, if she chooses.
Thus, Magpie Murders presents two mysteries: What happened to Alan, and what happens in the last chapter of his new book, titled Magpie Murders? Susan informally heads the first investigation, taking place in the here and now. Meanwhile, Pünd and the characters in Alan’s novel enact a separate mystery plot, set in 1955.
In a clever blending of present and past, fact and fiction, some of the characters in Susan’s world are portrayed by the same actors in Pünd’s. This is because Alan wrote thinly disguised real people into his books, usually to even scores. Therefore, Daniel Mays (Line of Duty) doubles as Detective Superintendent Locke in Susan’s world and the dull-witted D.I. Chubb in Pünd’s. Matthew Beard (Vienna Blood) is Alan’s lover, James Taylor, and also Pünd’s slow-on-the-uptake sidekick, James Fraser. Pippa Haywood (Mr. Selfridge) is Alan’s underachieving sister, Claire, as well as the resentful Clarissa, sister of the brutally murdered Sir Magnus Pye (Lorcan Cranitch, Trigger Point).
“It’s like solving two puzzles,” says MASTERPIECE’s Simpson, “and Anthony and the director, Peter Cattaneo (two-time Academy Award®-nominee for The Full Monty and Dear Rosie), pull it off brilliantly.”
One final mystery: Alan vehemently insists that the title of his book is Magpie Murders, not The Magpie Murders. Could that be a clue?
So there you have it. Intrigued? We sure are! Magpie Murders comprises six episodes, and they start airing on October 16. Mark your calendars!
A mystery author dies under suspicious circumstance, with his last book seemingly unfinished. This leaves two mysteries: What happened to him? And how does his latest potboiler end? Oscar®-nominee Lesley Manville (The Crown, Phantom Thread) stars as the author’s editor, Susan Ryeland, who assumes the role of detective in the case. Meanwhile, Tim McMullan (Patrick Melrose) plays the fictional sleuth in the incomplete novel, whose investigation parallels Susan’s. Based on Anthony Horowitz’s (Foyle’s War) ingenious bestselling novel, the six-part series also stars Conleth Hill, Michael Maloney, Alexandros Logothetis, and Claire Rushbrook. “There is true satisfaction in watching the pieces of Horowitz’s puzzle click into place,” applauded The Telegraph (London). In addition, The Sunday Times (London) declared, “Yikes, this is excellent.”
