Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy modernizes an 85-year-old text simply by changing the nationality of its main character, and it makes the story a whole lot less creaky as a result.

"Murder Is Easy" will be best enjoyed by those with an appreciation for the idiosyncrasies of Christie, for fictional English murder and for pumping new fuel into antique vehicles.

While overall subtly done (a real-life Fitzwilliam would have had it far worse), if anything, it heightens the mystery, adding another dimension of threat.

It is more fun when we are dealing with the village characters and a pub that falls deathly silent when Fitz walks in. But things warm up when he tries pork scratchings and finds them disgusting (he's right). I wasn't convinced by the sexual chemistry between Bridget (Morfyyd Clark) and Fitz.

It works perfectly well, though in the end, this becomes more of a routine whodunnit than it first suggests.

But the mundane truth is that this isn’t one of Christie’s top-tier works – her plotting is smart but there is no Marple or Poirot to pep it up. Rather than attempt to add interest by making changes, the BBC should have left this one on the shelf.

This version of “Murder Is Easy” has collapsed too much. The careful equation devised by Christie doesn’t work anymore. Instead of several suspects for Luke to consider, the story narrows it down to one or two and the mystery loses its snap. His careful process of elimination becomes perfunctory and Jonsson is given little to do but react placidly to the cardboard characters around him.