Wasted opportunity

That I didn't know...still was weak, doesn't change how I felt about it.

"Hey...I like that...I like that!!" Terry Silver Karate Kid III

Aidan Turner is the best Lombard from any of the English versions. The actor who played Blore was great, well cast, despite some dodgy scripting for his character. Marston was good, though would have been better to find an actor was was even more tall and muscular for the role. I agree that the Rogeres were superb.

Wow, I would have thought we were watching different adaptations, I guess different strokes for different folks.

I thought the casting was one of the strengths of the production and there wasn't anyone that I would have recast. Charles Dance, Aidan Turner, Burn Gorman, Miranda Richardson, Maeve Dermody, and Anna Maxwell Martin were all outstanding in providing depth of character with the material they were given, since one isn't reading a character's thoughts and background as one would in a book. There were some questionable choices made but casting wasn't one of them.

if you read the book you will see that all characters have a lack of depth, wich makes it the masterpiece it is in my opinion since you don´t care to much about them and they stay sort of a mystery

Overall I liked the casting. I'd have preferred the Brendan Gleesonesque version of Blore from the novel, but I liked Burn Gorman in the role, and Desyat Negrityat went with a slimmer actor for the role also.

I liked Aidan Turner as Lombard overall. He definitely had the look. I think the only issue I had with him was the writing, rather than the actor himself.

Lombard in the novel was a man of action, but he also had a suave humor about him. He only broke down once, briefly, after Wargrave's apparent death. For the most part, he treated the situation like a game he was certain he was going to win. His reflexes were heightened, Christie even wrote a line in the narrative where she described Lombard's reflexes being kicked into high gear and that he smiled often.

This version of Lombard was a little too action-hero. He rarely cracked a joke and when he did it was dripping with sarcasm. This BBC version of Lombard definitely would heighten the surprise to the uninformed viewer when he ultimately meets his end, especially how it happens, but it's a bit beyond what Christie wrote. In the novel, he's not so much an ation hero as he's just basically unflappable. This is mainly due to the fact he's been near death before, and has gotten away unscathed. Lombard is pretty much of the belief that the killer is not going to be more cunning than he is, and get the better of him. He admits as much to Blore after Rogers is killed. ("I've been in tight places before. I think I'll get out of this one,")

He's right, in a way, as the killer never attempts to kill him outright. Wargrave simply returns the revolver and leaves it up to chance that when Lombard and Vera discover Armstrong is dead and wrongly-assume they're the only two left alive, that Vera will gain the upper hand and kill Lombard, rather than the other way around. He even laments the fact he's made a huge mistake after Vera gets the gun (Death was very near to Philip Lombard now. It had never, he knew, been nearer.)

As I said though, I thought Turner did an excellent job playing what he was given. I think the top three Lombards out of all the versions are Turner, Louis Hayward, and Alexander Kaidanovsky. It's hard for me to pick a favorite. Kaidanovsky didn't quite have the look, though he blended the action and humor well, Turner had the action, but lacked the humor, and Hayward had the morbid humor down-pat, but not quite the action (Though, to be fair, the dark comedy aspect of his version as filmed would have made Turner's characterization out of place)

I think Turner is my favorite of the three, by a narrow margin, though if another version of Christie's darker version of the story is ever made, it will be interesting to see if that version of Lombard is more of a mix of Turner and Hayward's portrayals, which IMHO would make the perfect film version of the literary Lombard.