The 39 Steps last Sunday

[osprey]

What are Answerbankers' opinions on this version? I thought that it strayed too far from the original novel - like so many TV adaptations these days. Why do programme-makers feel the need to drastically alter classic stories, sometimes onlu keeping the original title, as will be the case in the forthcoming Marple story ''Nemesis''?

[Mr Veritas]

I thought it failed for several reasons.
1.I tried to hard,and so became po faced and not enjoyable.
2.It was asking a lot to condense it into an hour and a half.
3.There have already been 3(?) film versions,what did the producers hope to achieve by doing another one?
4.The direction was incredibly poor.There was no tension at all, and it just ambled a long.
Oddly enough there were several(possible) continuity errors,where did Hannays suitcase that he stole in the club go to,it wasnt at the station.
Where did he get the lamp he had in the barn from?
How did the spies know where he was,when he was on the Highland road(radar?LOL)
If someone rolled down a Highland hillside into the path of your car (in the middle of nowhere) why would you assume they were the Liberal Candidate?
I get the distinct feeling that this might have been "cut down" from a longer (say 3 hour) or two part production, a lot of things in it didn't make sense.
I must say I have never read the original book,so now am totally confused as to which version follows it,and which version uses the original ending too?
I know the Hitchcock one updates it,and maybe the Robert Powell one is set in the correct(?) period,but apart from that I am in the dark.

[Mr Veritas]

PS:~
Please don't get me started on the (Geraldine McEwan) Marples.
Again (after Joan Hickson) quite why the producers seemed to feel the need to make these (travesties) of Miss Marple I don't know.
GM is a good actress and a fair Miss Marple,but as for what they do to the stories it beggars belief.
Whether they will get any better with Julia McKenzie waits to be seen.If it's the same production company then nothing will improve.

[carolegif]

Why did they make the woman a suffragette? In the book she is a school teacher. Why did he stay in Scotland? The 39 steps were in Sussex near Dover. How come they got out of that oubliette with just a hairpin? It was daft.
At least we can watch the lovely Joan Hickson as Miss Marple all week in the afternoon on BBC 2.

[ash318]

I have not read the book , it was harmless and pleasant enough for me. I don't normally watch this sort of stuff but it was okay.

[jno]

the book was set in Scotland, where Buchan came from, and I thought it looked gorgeous; the atmosphere it provided was also part of the book's appeal. I don't see any reason why the woman couldn't be a suffragette, but making her a spy was a bit odd. If she was one, why did she instantly disbelieve Hannay when he started talking about German plots? You'd think she would have been all ears. And as for coming back from the dead... what was that all about? Was the guy who shot her actually a fellow British agent in on the plot? In that case, jolly bad luck that Hannay shoots him too.

[jno]

PS so in Scotland the ivy has already started changing colour in June? Must be awful chilly up there.

[bednobs]

i read in the rt that the "scottish highland" scenes were filmed beside a motorway