7 Questions for The Marlow Murder Club Creator, Robert Thorogood
Robert Thorogood, creator of both Death in Paradise and The Marlow Murder Club, knows his way around a good mystery. In this exclusive MASTERPIECE Q&A, he shares a key change he made adapting The Marlow Murder Club for TV, reveals his surprise cameo in the show, and imagines a crime-solving crossover with Judith Potts and a Death in Paradise detective.
For fans of the Marlow books, what changes, if any, did you make in the main characters for the TV show?
I think the main change is that in the books, Judith Potts is kind of based on my grandmother Betty, my great aunts Jean and Jess, and my mom and all of my mom’s friends, including her really good friend Judith, who taught my mom how to do crosswords. … (It’s my grandma Betty who would have a glass of whiskey every night at 6:00pm.) So, I’ve put all these amazing women I was sort of raised by—I’ve put them all into Judith and I’ve made her quite old because in my head that sort of generation is quite old.
But for the TV show we’ve made Judith a bit younger. For me, what really, really mattered was that when Judith is in the room, she has to be the cleverest person there and she has to have that sparkle and wit. And I was amazed and delighted when we got Samantha Bond to play Judith Potts. She brings all of that joy and joie de vivre and intelligence to the part. But she is younger on the TV show than in the books.
If Judith Potts and one of the Death in Paradise detectives investigated the same murder, who would solve it first—and how would they get along?
Oh, that’s delightful! I think [Death in Paradise’s Detective Inspector] Richard Poole and Judith Potts would solve it very quickly together. They would rub each other up the wrong way, but very quickly realize they had to respect each other. Judith wouldn’t have much time for [second detective] Humphrey Goodman. I believe she’d be delighted with [the third], Jack Mooney, but think he was a bit too kind, not ruthless enough. And she simply wouldn’t understand the character of Neville Parker, [detective number four].
How fun. I’ve never thought of that sort of crossover. When I came up with Death in Paradise, Richard Poole was very much my Hercule Poirot because I’m obsessed with Agatha Christie, with fair play murder mysteries. And after many years of doing … Death in Paradise, I started to think [who] would be my Jane Marple? In some respects, Judith is for me Jane Marple and Richard Poole is my Hercule Poirot. So yes, let’s send Hercule and Jane out to solve crimes together. I think they’d have a ball.
Which two iconic mystery characters would you include in your own Murder Club and why?
Oh, that would be so good. Do you know what? I would like Peter Ustinov’s Poirot as one of them because he was so jolly and so fun, and I love the twinkle in his eyes. And then who would I partner him with? Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of Joan Hickson’s Jane Marple. … It’s a bit boring as an answer, but again, when I think of murder mysteries, I only think of Agatha Christie. It’s Agatha who I’m drawn to over and over and over again. It’s the characters, it’s the setting, it’s the plot, it’s the humor, it’s the extraordinary magic tricks she pulls off at the end. So, let’s have Sir Peter Ustinov’s Poirot and Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple [be in the club] with me.
You’ve called the Marlow books “a love letter to small-town living.” Can you explain?
I live in Marlow. I’ve lived in Marlow for many years. I loved the idea of setting a murder mystery there; it’s much easier for me to do my research! But when I started thinking about it, I got a bit militant, because I thought, do you know what? We set a lot of stories in big, glamorous cities. Murder mysteries like Morse, the brilliant Morse, in Oxford. We set stuff in tiny villages. Jane Marple operates out of St. Mary Mead. Do you know who gets totally overlooked? Your middle of the road, quite average, small sized town.
What’s lovely about Marlow is that it’s like a Goldilocks town. It’s just the right size, not too big, not too small. There are people from all different walks of life here and everyone rubs along. … And I just thought, yeah, let’s do a show set somewhere which isn’t necessarily cool, but it’s beautiful and it’s real. So, it is a love letter.
What other parts of beautiful Marlow might we see in future seasons?
Well, if I have anything to do with it, every single big house on that river. Because I’ve spent years walking my two lovely whippets along the river, and you look at those houses and you go, “Come on, who lives in there? What’s really going on inside?” … So, we’re going to see more big houses. And then, everything that could be in a small town is in Marlow. In my day-to-day life, I’m constantly thinking as I’m at the butchers or in the bookshop, “Oh, I wonder if anyone here would kill anyone?” We’ve got an amazing vineyard at the end of my road, and I said [to the owner], “Oh, if we’re still going, can we film with you perhaps?” And she said, “Yeah, yeah, come up and have a look.” So, I’m thinking, “Oh, yeah, vineyards. That’s a good place for a murder.”
What do you love about a crossword puzzle and why make Judith someone who crafts them?
I think in America, your crosswords tend to be more [straightforward]: There’s a clue to which there is just one answer. [Note: British crosswords are cryptic puzzles. They use wordplay, requiring solvers to decipher multiple layers of interpretation.] I have a very process driven brain, and I love [that in cryptic puzzles] you have this clue which appears to be one sentence of information, but there are actually two halves to it and both halves give the same answer. One is the literal half, which is sort of like a synonym, and the other is the cryptic part. It’s a bit like Judith solving a murder mystery; when you eventually get the answer to any cryptic clue you know you’re right because both halves give the same answer.
I also love the shape of a crossword’s grids. I love that you start with this blank space and there’s this pretty pattern of blacks and whites. And that feeling when you finish a crossword and you’ve actually got all of the answers—that same feeling of satisfaction is a metaphor for Judith solving crimes. It was absolutely ideal. You need to have an attention to detail. You need to have knowledge. That was why I thought it would be brilliant if she were a crossword setter. … I’m not the first person to have thought that people who solve murder mysteries should be crossword fans—Inspector Morse did crosswords—but it suited Judith, I felt.
We understand you acted alongside Olivia Colman in your own theatre company at university. As a practiced actor, are you tempted to make a cameo appearance in your TV series?
In my 20s I wanted to be a writer, but also an actor. It was quite typical at our university [theater club] that we’d both write and perform. You’d write something one week and perform it the next. … But as it turns out, I’m a lot more bashful than I was back then. Whenever I’ve had the chance to cameo on TV, I’ve turned it down. But Steve Barron, our director, said, “Come on, let’s go and film at the regatta.” So, we set a scene at the regatta [in Season 1 Episode 1], which is when one of the key suspects is first revealed to be quite horrible. In one of the cutaways, you briefly see me in a blue blazer holding a microphone. Briefly. And my wife and our friends, because actually we decided in for a penny in for a pound. All sort of standing around drinking champagne and looking very glamorous in the sunshine.
