Filming Magpie Murders

short | 05:06 | CC

Author, writer, and executive producer Anthony Horowitz describes the extraordinary experience of watching his story come to life on camera.

Transcript

(jaunty orchestral music) - So here we are now at the end of the show, and the solution has been revealed, and my hope is that people who have watched it, whether they guessed the ending or not, will, at least, agree that all the clues were out there in plain sight, because that, to me, is the most important thing, that the writer cannot cheat the audience.

At the same time, they shouldn't feel too bad if they didn't.

I never solve murder mysteries when I watch them, for what it's worth.

In this show, we did have some problems.

For example, obviously, there are anagrams which are part of the solution, and we made sure, in the filming, that, for example, the titles of the books have been visible many, many times.

A Frankfort Book Fair at the beginning in the offices in London.

I think in Allen's study.

- The first letters spell out an anagram.

- I have worked with the director and with the DP even, and with the producers to make sure that anything that is important, any detail has been on the screen.

- Two of us was never that close.

He was always a very quiet boy, kept himself to himself.

- Matthew Blakiston provided the last piece of the jigsaw.

- [Camera Operator] Two two, take one, A mark.

- I do love visiting the set, although it's an interesting fact.

The only person on a set who has absolutely nothing to do and no reason to be there is the writer.

My work has been done months before, but I still love to go there because it's an extraordinary thought.

Like the funeral sequences, all these people, the church, the graveyard, the magpies, the crew, they're all there because of something that started in my head.

I just can't get my thoughts around that.

It's such an extraordinary experience and a feeling to be there.

- [Camera Operator 2] Action.

- I'd like to make cameo appearances in my own shows if possible.

I'm a great admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, and so I do miniature appearances in many of my shows.

In Foyle's War, I've been, I think, a dead body, man reading a newspaper and man buying socks in the black market.

I did do a day on Magpie Murders.

I'm at one of the funerals.

Why do I enjoy it?

I suppose it's not egotism, it's just fun.

It's, it's going into the world that I created and being part of it.

That's really what it's about.

And I suppose it also blurs the line between fiction and reality, which is what this program is all about.

- I'm gonna go to Suffolk and look for the missing pages.

- I am very lucky to spend a lot of time in the county of Suffolk, which is about two hours from London and which is a very, very beautiful part of England.

One of the things that makes it so beautiful are the villages.

And there are many of them, which are hundreds of years old, which haven't changed too much over the years, which provide perfect settings for murder mysteries such as ours.

And we drove into Kersey and knew at once that it was absolutely perfect for Saxby-on-Avon because it has that long road with the Ford going across the middle of it.

It has the church dominating the whole village on the top of the hill.

It had the, the, the houses that could become antique shops and butcher shops and bakeries.

And I think that what's important for us is that it's a sort of a, a world of its own.

That once you arrive at Kersey or Saxby-on-Avon or whatever you want to call it you sort of feel you've come home.

You know, the villages really were very kind to us and very helpful with the shooting.

We had a fantastic time there.

We're very happy to share this beautiful place with the rest of the world.

- And the detective will always solve the crime as sure as day will follow the night in the world in which I exist, this is an immutable fact.

- Ah, yes.

The certainty.

That's why people love you.

- You wish to know the answer.

- Are you kidding?

That's all I want to know.

- If you ask me what makes episode six of Magpie Murders special, it's the rap because the rap is the moment we've all been waiting for.

You know, when all the clues work when all the characters come together, does everything sort of fit into place?

- It's not what is written.

It is how it is written.

That is where the solution can be found.

- And it's interesting though that the idea of sort of the suspects all gathered together of a detective holding forth was something suggested to Agatha Christie by her publishers.

She wasn't going to do it originally but they decided that was what people would like to read.

And I think it does have a real sense of satisfaction when you get to that scene and everything is sort of spelled out for you.

And of course, what we do, which is really unusual is we put the modern character Susan into the middle of it.

And this was a thought I had quite late in the day which you would leave her hospital bed and as it were hold Atticus Pund's hand and be taken back in time and into this fictional world to be a sort of a ghost-like figure herself watching the action from the sidelines, and even commenting occasionally to Atticus as she guesses what he's about to say.

It was lovely to watch Lesley Manville in her nightie walking through this village in the middle of the day with a, with a 1950s detective.

Really very strange, very surreal.

And for me, very special.

(suspicious music)