27 December 2016

From skin fetishes to hacking coughs: the most festive moments in The Witness for the Prosecution

This year’s Agatha Christie is a seasonally appropriate, not-at-all-bleak offering from the BBC.

Christmas TV means two things: murder mysteries and period dramas. And if you’re lucky – both at once. Enter Witness for the Prosecution: an Agatha Christie adaptation starring Toby Jones and Kim Cattrall. You know, Agatha Christie, queen of twee crime fiction perfect for a quiet winter night in with the family. Here, we look back fondly at the most festive moments from Part One:

A young soldier runs, gasping, through cold and muddy trenches.
A straggly-haired, pale-faced girl appears to him, her face wrought with misery and disappointment.
A man leaves a wet, loveless kiss on the face of his wife, who pretends to be asleep in order to avoid confronting the torture of the moment.
A man coughs.
A lonely, creepy older woman discusses the “vigour”, “gleam”, and “heft” of young wartime men. “I like their skin,” she purrs to her young male companion.
She humiliates him by forcing him to bathe in front of her for money, feeding him (symbolic) cold pieces of meat in the process.
Water drips from the open grate in the ceiling of Toby Jones’ sad office.
A maid shivers in fear as blood drips from her shaking hands onto a soft cream carpet.
A fluffy cat licks dark blood from its matted, white fur.
A man is beaten in the face with a truncheon.
A man coughs again.
A bereaved woman slowly and methodically forces a sewing needle into her thumb. Blood spills from the tiny wound.
A man cries heavy sobs alone in a theatre as a show comes to an end. It was a matinée performance.
Endless, hacking coughs.
A horrible sex scene, starring Toby Jones, ends when he coughs up phlegm onto his wife’s face.
A different woman spits in her husband’s face.
A man coughs up blood.