I've been reading several of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, and I was curious about whether you had any thoughts/opinions about them? I also watched the Speedy Death episode of the adaptation with Dame Diana Rigg and enjoyed it, but as with many adaptations of Golden Age and classic mystery novels, the series is not well-received nor accurate, from what I've heard. And, if you had such opinions, whether you had any ideas about who to cast in an adaptation now (I rather like Dame Harriet Walter for Dame Adela Beatrice Lestrange Bradley at this point)
First of all, let me say that I love your idea of casting Dame Harriet Walter as Mrs. Bradley! I perceive your vision! This vision has a lot to do with Mrs. Bradley being an eccentric who sweeps into closed households to judge people while being fabulous, and while the Mrs. Bradley of the books may not be as glamorous as Dame Diana Rigg (who is?) she's set such a precedent that I think we should go for glamour once again.
Queen (of my heart.) Apropos casting: isn't it a plot point that George, the chauffeur, like Watson and Bunter before him, is hot enough that he gets sent on honeypot missions? I was just thinking recently that Toby Regbo should get more interesting work, so maybe him. George should have an edge, as well as conspicuous good looks.
My main complaint about the '90s TV adaptation is that it represents, in my opinion, a kind of extreme of what I like to call "cozy-washing" in period mysteries. There's a jaunty theme tune; there are comedic happenings. It feels like Blandings with some murder thrown in. Which is not the tone of the novels (as you know, obviously.)
As for the novels... I confess that, while the prose and plotting are good, I find them rather painfully dated. And I say this as someone who rereads Marsh and Sayers and Christie with great fidelity (and, to a lesser extent, Allingham.) But while I would say that the Queens of Crime are always writing with some critical distance from the social prejudices they're describing, I struggle to feel that way about Mitchell. And I think I would find her novels much more engaging if they spent more time exploring/examining the social forces that lead to the particular constellations of fear, desire, need, etc. that precipitate crime. There's some irony in this, I realize, since Mrs. Bradley's psychological training is the central conceit of what drives her work as a detective. But maybe that's part of it: that the novels are too confident that she understands the human psyche completely and correctly. Without getting too spoilerish for Speedy Death: I think there's material there that could be explored in ways allowing a really interesting look at diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. But I think the novel frames anything outside a very narrow norm as dangerous -- even though Mrs. Bradley, as a middle-aged woman with no embarrassment about sexuality, herself defies that norm! You've read the novels more recently than I have at this point, so you may have more nuanced ideas! And I think the plots of several of them could be adapted in really interesting ways. But I kept having the experience, reading them, of being shocked at the attitudes and realities that were apparently accepted by Mitchell and her characters as axiomatic.
