From her little cottage, Miss Marple has unravelled dozens of mysteries in her forty plus-year career and for nearly that long she has appeared on screens both big and small.
In the 1960's Margaret Rutherford (I'm Alright Jack, The Importance of Being Earnest, Blithe Spirit etc..) portrayed the famous sleuth as a more comic character than Christie may have intended, in such films as Murder She Said, Murder at the Gallop, Murder Most Foul and Murder Ahoy. Far from the tall, thin and proper woman Christie wrote about, Rutherford's portrayal is still charming and rather satisfying, though the plotlines were never quite up to snuff (in fact, the first film, Murder She Said, was actually based on the Hercule Poirot story After the Funeral!). These films are screened frequently on TV these days and I highly recommend them for their entertainment value if not their faithfulness to the original books.
On the small screen the earliest Jane Marple was Gracie Fields who tackled the role in 1956's A Murder is Announced. The late, great Helen Hayes and Murder She Wrote's Angela Lansbury also took turns as Miss Marple but the definitive television Marple has to be Joan Hickson who has made the part her own in much the same way David Sucet has defined the role of Christie's other world-renowned sleuth Hercule Poirot in that detective's own series of television adaptations. Hickson's Marple is far more authentic than those before her and what she may lack in comic bluster she more than makes up for with a depth of character that other TV sleuths would give their eye teeth for. Hickson, in films since the thirties, also has a link to the earlier Rutherford Marple — she had a small role in the film Murder She Said playing Mrs. Kidder, a local woman that Marple spars with. The Miss Marple mysteries are seen in repeats the world over and are a treat for anyone who likes a nice cozy mystery.
A more modern Marple can be found in the person of Hetty Wainthropp as portrayed by Patricia Routledge in the series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. Routledge, best known for her award-winning work as the class addled Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet naturally) in the hit comedy Keeping Up Appearances, brings the (by now almost clichéd) figure of the elderly woman detective into the nineties. Hetty, much like Jane Marple before
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