Disappointing - SPOILERS
Hugh Laurie's three episode adaptation of Agatha Christie's 'Why Didn't They Ask Evans ?' is a swing and a miss unfortunately.
Firstly the casting is off. Will Poulter as Bobby Jones, the young male lead and romantic interest, just hasn't got the oomph necessary for the role. He is too bland and too dull. Lucy Boynton as Lady Frances Derwent is much better but she looks too old and hard bitten to play the wide eyed and up for anything Frankie. And Maeve Dermody at 36 and looking every inch of it is way too old for Moira Nicholson. Moira is supposed to have captivated Bobby with the allure of her beauty based on him just looking at her photograph !
The character of Moira Nicholson is pivotal to the story as she is supposed to be the breathtakingly beautiful damsel in distress, the mystery girl. Is she telling the truth ? Is her life in danger ? Is she mentally ill ? But in this adaptation Moira barely gets a look in which largely leaves out one of the main story lines and driver of the plot.
Similarly Dr Nicholson ( Moira's husband ) one of the chief suspects gets very little time as well so this mini-series is essentially missing it's main bad guy. It's as though Hugh Laurie, who is credited with writing this adaptation, had not read the book, it's very odd.
The other main problem is that the first two episodes deal with the first half of the book so the second half of the book where the pace picks up and most of the action occurs had to be squeezed into one episode. And it didn't work because most of that action was either left out or trampled over in the rush to the end.
Still it looks good and there are some solid performances.