Miss Marple

This BBC TV series, made between 1984 and 1992 and starring Joan Hickson as the titular sleuth, started as a choppily-paced, unevenly directed, middle-of-the-road Sunday-night TV series (whether it was actually shown on Sunday nights or not, I don't know, but it feels like it should have been) before developing into a much more polished production with the final few episodes shown as feature-length episodes that went out on Christmas Day.

The turning point was probably the 1986 Christmas special (the first such one they did), The Murder at the Vicarage, which featured Paul "immaculate, I'd say" Eddington (then at the height of his powers, in between seasons 1 and 2 of Yes Prime Minister) as the vicar, which was just a noticeable step of quality above what had come before.

Unlike the later ITV adaptations, which revelled in their stunt-casting, this features well-chosen character actors (mostly of the "it's thingy... you know, from that thing!" variety) in most of the supporting parts. An only-just-post-Doctor Who Peter Davison turns up in one of the middle stories - that's the sort of level we're dealing with. Donald Pleasance was probably the biggest name guest-star, and he makes the unusual choice of playing his part with an Alan Sugar-esque Cockney accent - but as he was playing a self-made millionaire in a story made in 1989, this may even have been a deliberate reference.

Probably the most fun thing about the series was the sense of continuity in the recurring characters, most obviously Inspector Slack (played by David Horovitch), the head investigating policeman in several of the cases - each time he gets increasingly annoyed by Miss Marple's interference in 'his' case, to the point where it became as much fun anticipating his reaction upon first seeing her as it is anticipating Columbo's arrival in a typical episode of that series. In the penultimate episode he even undergoes some character development, as he finally learns to accept and then respect her help.

The final episode, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, is something of a grand finale, bringing back multiple characters from earlier episodes (including Slack) like a parade of greatest hits. It even subverts its twee reputation with the last line being, quite literally, "More tea vicar?"