Joan Hickson as Miss Marple

This month I have mostly been rewatching the Joan Hickson iteration of Miss Marple... Joan Hickson really is the definitive Miss Marple and as I age myself I appreciate her performances more and more.  What she personifies that other iterations of the character do not is an absolute ruthlessness and cynicism through her delivery of lines like : "Well, of course you believed him.  I never believe people".  She also really sells scenes such as allowing the murderer to drink their own poison instead of going to the gallows.  The other thing that comes over in her interpretation is a dreadful sense of doom.  Miss Marple is literally tortured by knowing bad things are going to happen but being unable to prevent them.  She has an Oracle like power for predicting disaster.  The ITV Marples are by comparison softer and more endearing figures.  Hickson's Marple whilst putting on a pretence of onset dementia really isn't an endearing character at all so much as a formidable adversary to anyone she takes on.  An early BBC co-production, another thing the Hickson versions have to sell them is a lot of money was spent and it's clearly all on the 4:3 screen.  Particularly effective serials are "Sleeping Murder" where the main protagonist thinks she's going mad until Miss Marple makes sense of her repressed memories and "Nemesis" which has a memorable episode ending of a person being crushed by a bust falling off a balcony as seen in reflection through a glass cabinet case.  Truly masterful shot composition.  One of the early serials is even directed by Roy of the Boulting Brothers such was the profile of this series.  Some of the most powerful episodes are the ones where Miss Marple is held back from the audience to quite a way into the serial.  For example, she's only actually in about the last five minutes of the first episode of "A Murder Is Announced" when she's called in by the police to help and puts all the pieces together into a new order to form an entirely new thesis confounding the audience.  Paola Dionisotti and Sylvia Syms are particularly good as the implied lesbian couple in this one.  Generally the casting is stella.  Not to discount the other Miss Marples... but the modern ITV Maples like the Margaret Rutherford film version play it more for laughs.  Joan Hickson's Miss Marple is a much darker character.  A deadly clever ruthless manipulator who one really should never want to cross intellectual swords with ...