Doctor Who Vs. Marple: Why Didn't Ask Evans?

Julia McKenzie made her debut as Jane

Marple in the fourth run of ITV Studio's

Agatha Christie mysteries, succeeding Geraldine McEwan in the title role.

The Queen of Crime's fifteenth crime novel (which did not actually feature

Marple) was published in the UK in

1934, then issued as The Boomerang

 Clue in America a year later.

The story was first dramatised by LWT

in 1980, and co-starred Joan Hickson

before she began her own definitive

portrayal of Marple for the BBC. A

new TV version (a co-production from Mammoth Screen) debuted on Britbox

in April 2022. This adaptation (which premiered in America in July 2009,

then only aired in the UK two years later) was shown on ITV3 today - it starred Georgia Moffett, Mark Williams, Natalie Dormer, Rik Mayall,

 and thirteen Doctor Who cast and crew connections:

• Samantha [Jane] Bond (Sylvia here; Julia in A Murder is Announced, 1985; Stella in The Adventure of the Cheap Flat; Narrator of Inside the Mind of Agatha Christie, 100 Years of Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie's England & The Hollow, 2020) was Mrs. Wormwood in The Sarah Jane Adventures: Invasion of the Bane and Enemy of the Bane, then reprised for Big Finish's The Revenge of Wormwood (2023), and also voiced Mother Baroque for The Scapegoat (2009)
• Sean Biggerstaff (Attfield) voiced Chris Parsons for Shada (2003), Snabb/Brother Tangent for The Skull of Sobek, the Ruhk for Time Reef (both 2008), Ross Nicholson for Masters of Earth (2014), Moros for Enemy Lines (2016), Callum Volta for Cold Vengeance (2017), Noah for Jenny 1 (2018), Jenny 2 (2021) and Prism (2022), and David Campbell for After the Daleks
• Richard [David] Briers (Wilson here; Binster in Murder She Said) was the Chief Caretaker in Paradise Towers
• Helen [Margaret] Lederer (Marjorie) voiced Patricia Ryder for Death in Blackpool (2009)
• Basher Savage (George) voiced Yanikov for Earth Aid (2011)
• Siwan Morris (Florrie) was Maebh's Mum for In The Forest of the Night
• Nicholas Hopkins was also assistant director on Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways
• for Alex Kaye-Besley see Murder is Easy
• for Tom Lucy see At Bertram's Hotel
• for Sean Clayton and Nigel Squibb see The Body in the Library
• for Gavin Walters see A Pocket Full of Rye