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Luckily, the saving grace was as usual a great cast of brilliant British actors. Martin Shaw is a good actor, but like most of the other fans I prefer Roy Marsden. As an avid P. Unlike other comments, I feel that the movie must at least be true to the writer's creation of the character's personality. Adam Dagliesh is a classy, private, remote, creative intelligent, sensitive character, not the "Bull In a China Shop" personality that Martin Shaw portrays in Murder Room. Don't get me wrong, I love "Judge Deed" and Shaw's portrayal of him, but his performance simply doesn't fit as James's "Dagliesh" character.
Roy Marsden out of his theater environment for these wonderful new productions of P. James excellent novels and enjoy his accurate and creative interpretation of the Dagliesh character. In closing I must say that the film itself was well written, well directed, and true to the novel.
This feels to me like a pretty poor adaptation of a PD James book. The first espisode can almost be ignored completely. The editing in the initial 50 mins is awful But for me the real problem is that all the characters in the film are simply unpleasant. Dalgliesh's 2 junior officers seem to hate each so much that he let's let bicker and insult each other continually during the investigation. Would a Commander at the Met really let that happen during a murder investigation?
All the other characters in the drama are awful people, with something to hide, and seemingly no redeeming features.
Editorial Reviews. About the Author. Joan Fleming was one of the most original and literate In the Red (Murder Room) by [Fleming, Joan]. Kindle App Ad. Title, Pilot Program: Murder Room: "Boom Goes the Neighborhood" .. The number was probably a red herring. I'd probably rather watch On.
OK Sian Phillips character is nice. It adds no value to stories ever. In this adaptation Dalgliesh is made out to be a complete fool with Dr Lavenham. The meal they almost have after 48 mins in Esp 1 - he really goes out on a date with an incredibly beautiful Cambridge Don with his phone on? But before he mobile rings, he is simply dithering in front of a "perfect woman". Dalgliesh is super smart Met Commander and a poet!
But incapable of expressing himself on a date BTW they pour their own wine in a fancy restaurant - inconceivable that could happen. In the second episode the pace picks up and isn't bad.
Trivia About The Murder Room It gets mentioned several times in the rest of the book. I still got the True Ending, but there might be a way to get her out without him having to die. Jul 12, Amanda rated it liked it Shelves: View all 7 comments. Open any door and you might set your foot in a room that should not be there, a room with red-soaked walls and the reek of the charnel house.
Finally, I do not think that Shaw makes Dalgliesh any more human than Marsden. Marsden's performances are more nuanced. But Shaw is a fine actor, and does a good job here. Overall I think "A taste for death" is the best TV adaptation. James, is an excellent whodunit starring Martin Shaw as Adam Dalgliesh, and that's the problem right there.
Though a fine actor, he just isn't Dalgliesh for me. I remember the old series starring Roy Marsden as being more exciting. The story concerns a lease about to expire on a family museum, and there is one holdout, Neville Dupayne, who does not want to re-sign. Neville, a doctor, thinks the money could be put to medical use. When Neville dies in what appears to be a copycat murder of a display in the Murder Room, Commander Dalgleish is brought in. He has a lot of suspects to choose from -- the victim's brother and sister, museum employees who stood to lose their jobs, his secretary who is also his ex-mistress, and others.
The solution, however, won't be found by investigating only the present day. But unbeknown to Dalgliesh Edwin Lorrimer, a forensic scientist working at a private laboratory is found killed, Detective Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh is sent to investigate. Dalgliesh had been in the area Sir Paul Berowne - a prominent Government Minister - turns to his old friend Adam Dalgleish following a series of threatening letters delivered to his London home. The minister's wife is in His superiors order him back to work to investigate the A young girl mysteriously vanishes from her English village home.
With the help of DS John Bacchus, Inspector George Gently spends his days bringing to justice members of the criminal underworld who are unfortunate enough to have the intrepid investigator assigned to their cases. The lease on the Dupayne Museum is almost up and under the terms of their father's will, all three of the Dupayne children must agree to continue or the museum is to close. Neville Dupayne is dead set against continuing the museum when the money could be used for a much better purpose. One of the museum's key attractions is the Murder Room, displaying information on a series of notorious murders from between the two World Wars.
When Neville dies in a way reminiscent of one of the murders on display in the Murder Room, Commander Adam Dalgleish is asked to investigate. There are any number of suspects: A second murder reveals some of the activities of the upper classes and the solution lies in a long-ago wrong that someone is seeking to right. As always, P D James has written a very good and intriguing story.
The adaptation is faithful to the book: However maybe the explanation of the murderer's motives was glossed over a little. Martin Shaw's portrayal is arguably less faithful to the character as P D James writes it, but portrays him as a more human, likable character. I always found Roy Marsden's portrayal and his description in P D James's books to be stern, humourless, aloof, distant and with no likable qualities or little human failings that I could identify with.
I liked the subplot about his girlfriend. It showed his vulnerability and his awkwardness with women; the letter that he wrote to her at the end I won't spoil it by mentioning the subject was very moving. I agree that characters of Dalgliesh's two inspectors weren't really developed properly they aren't in the book either. One of the slight failings of the Dalgliesh books and TV series are that the relationship between Dalgliesh and his sidekicks isn't strong enough that they can confide in each other, in the way that Morse and Lewis or Wexford and Burden do. The acid test of a "good" TV detective, aside from their deductive qualities, is whether you like them as a person and could imagine yourself discussing a case with them over a pint.
With Morse, Frost or Wexford, this is easy to imagine; with Dalgliesh, especially as portrayed by Roy Marsden, I suspect that the conversation would be a bit tense and there would be lots of long silences! At least it is easier to imagine having a drink and a chat with Martin Shaw's version of Dalgliesh. Enjoy a night in with these popular movies available to stream now with Prime Video.
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Full Cast and Crew. Adam Dalgliesh looks into the connection between the grisly exhibits at the Dupayne family museum and the murder of adopted son Neville. Shows I Want to See. Share this Rating Title: The Murder Room — 7. Although the Bloch-Golgol theories of the Murder Room are widely known within the Ordo Malleus, they are greeted with widely differing levels of credence, ranging from cautious consideration to outright disdain by some.
The theories are not widely circulated outside the Ordo, save for those with a penchant for occult murder plots and intra-Inquisition scandal. As a result, the Inquisition has no avowed position on this threat or even its definite existence. Most wait to be convinced. Just what dark truth lies behind the Murder Room and killings that surround it is up to the GM, but the following section posits three different takes on just what the monstrous secret could be. Of course some combination of all three or more is entirely possible. Though the Ruinous Power known as Khorne , the Blood God, is primarily considered to be a deity of battle and rage, some also see the Skull Lord as a patron and embodiment of violent death and murder in all of its formsfrom the spilling of blood to the screams of the dying.
Cults devoted to such a vile being are rare but not unknown. They tend to be composed of isolated groups of deranged killers, lone butchers, and, more rarely, organized societies devolved from Imperial death cults or assassin brotherhoods.
Such groups might have begun killing for profit or cause but have succumbed over time to madness, sadistic brutality, and the addiction of dealing death for its own sake. The Murder Room could be a front for such a cult, or perhaps a true phenomenon summoned by them by the very act of ritual murder itself. It could be an altar of blood, half within reality and half within the warp, a borderland for fitting sacrifices to the Throne of Skulls, its victims chosen at random or by some esoteric selection process impenetrable to a sane mind.
There are places where the barrier between corporeal reality and the warp wear thin. Some of these weakened veils exist for no known reason save perhaps for ancient accident or mischance of location, whilst others are places where sorcerous rituals have been worked or terrible atrocities committed.
The aftershocks of such incidents echo in the warp, and if, by a quirk of cosmology or chance they become trapped in the weave of things, their violence and anger can be reflected and amplified back on themselves endlessly to create a Murder Room. Such a frozen moment of horror, caught forever in time, would be a dangerous labyrinth to become trapped withinits reality shaped only by suffering, grief, and pain. Such a dangerous wound in the universe would be difficult, but not impossible, for a servant of the Inquisition to battle and unmake.
There could of course be far darker things at work than mere human evil or twisted ruptures in the fabric of reality. There may be a daemonic intelligence, thirsting for blood, at the center of the Murder Room. If this is the case, then stepping across the threshold to the Murder Room is crossing into hell in a literal senseit is travelling into a sinkhole of murder immemorial and becoming the plaything of the bloody denizens that dwell in this red abyss.
What returns from such a fate will no longer be human. It will either be corrupted beyond reason, fused with utter wickedness, or no less than a daemon wearing the mask of earthly flesh.