TEASERS

BEYOND OUR KEN

A HAUNTING IN VENICE The ’tec with the ’tash grapples with the ghostly in Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot outing.

He solved a Murder on the Orient Express. He got to the bottom of a Death on the Nile. A Haunting in Venice, though, may finally be a match for Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells in Kenneth Branagh’s third starry helping of Agatha Christie mystery.

Director-star-producer Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green stuck with the tried and tested for the first two instalments of what has now become a trilogy of vehicles for the former’s take on Christie’s canny Belgian. (Both Murder and Death were famously filmed in the 1970s, with Albert Finney playing Poirot in the first and Peter Ustinov taking over in the second.) With A Haunting in Venice, however, they have gone decidedly off-piste, opting instead to adapt a far more obscure entry in the canon: 1969’s Hallowe’en Party, a country-house whodunnit of middling repute whose most noteworthy feature – beside a cameo from Ariadne Oliver, a fictional writer of detective stories generally considered to be Aggie’s alter ego – is the affectionate dedication it contains to author P.G. Wodehouse.

Largely overlooked by all but Christie’s most devoted readers, Hallowe’en Party’s chief calling card prior to this year was the 2010 chapter of ITV’s Poirot series – an episode that, coincidentally enough, happened to have Sir Ken’s former mother- and sister-in-law (Phyllida Law and Sophie Thompson) in supporting roles. (Filmgoers might also recall the book being among the Christmas gifts that Jude Hill’s Buddy unwraps in Branagh’s 2021 Oscar-winner Belfast.) According to Christie’s great-grandson and A Haunting in Venice’s executive producer James Prichard, though, the novel’s nods to the paranormal are just what the franchise needs.

‘If we are going to continue to make these films, we can’t do the same thing over and over,’ he tells Teasers. ‘A departure at this moment is possibly risky, but it also has the potential to keep it alive, bring in a different audience, and do something interesting that will hopefully surprise and delight.’

Set in Italy’s lagoon city after World War Two, the story finds Poirot – effectively now retired and living in selfimposed exile – reluctantly persuaded by his old friend Ariadne (Tina Fey) to attend a seance conducted by ‘the unholy Miss Joyce Reynolds’ (Michelle Yeoh), a clairvoyant and psychic with a flair for the dramatic and a penchant for carnival masks. To Poirot, Joyce is just ‘an opportunist who preys on the vulnerable’ that well deserves the scepticism of Ariadne and others. (‘I must tell you, madame, I have been all my life uncharmed by your kind,’ he tells her.) For grieving mother Rowena (Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly), though, she’s a conduit to the other side who might be able to connect her with the daughter she’s lost – agirl whose absence haunts her decaying palazzo as spookily as any poltergeist.

Naturally, with Poirot in the vicinity, there is soon a corpse on the premises… though Prichard won’t reveal whose. (‘I’m not going to give you plot points because I’m averse to spoilers,’ he says. ‘But in some ways the supernatural is a suspect.’) It’s fair to say, though, that with a cast that includes Belfast’s Jamie Dornan, the aforementioned Hill and Camille Cottin from Call My Agent!, there is no shortage of viable victims: a testament, says Prichard, to the calibre of player his great-grandmother’s work continues to entice.

‘There’s a fun aspect to starring in an Agatha Christie because she wrote incredible stories,’ he goes on. ‘But I think actors find the idea of an ensemble attractive as well. Ken runs his films a bit like a theatre troupe and people tend to have fun on his sets. I think he produces an incredible environment, which is why we have managed to get such amazing casts in our films.’

‘Ken runs his films a bit like a theatre troupe and people tend to have fun on his sets’

JAMES PRICHARD

The arresting urb of Venice, meanwhile – showcased already this summer in the latest Mission: Impossible – is a star all by itself. ‘Having a grand setting with films of this type makes a huge difference,’ nods Prichard. ‘Venice has a mysticism that adds to the tone in a way no other city would. Ken went to Venice for a couple of weeks and got real-time shots that add an immense amount. Canals and water play a part in the film also, so it all adds to the atmosphere.’

Interiors were shot at Pinewood, with Haris Zambarloukos – Branagh’s go-to DoP since 2007’s Sleuth – handling the visuals. The result, states Prichard, is ‘an amazing piece of work that very much continues Ken and Michael’s exploration of Poirot and his journey.’

As for Poirot’s spectacular moustache, it’s back where it belongs after its shock disappearance at the end of Death on the Nile. ‘My greatgrandmother said he had the greatest moustache in all the world and I think Ken’s got it,’ Prichard chuckles. ‘A lot of people think it’s too big but I absolutely applaud what he’s done with it. I remember my first ever conversation with Ken in 2015 when we discussed the basics of playing Poirot. He said, “Poirot has a moustache and he has a Belgian accent and I’m going to do both.”’ Will Ken get to do them again, though? He will if the keeper of Christie’s legacy has a say in the matter. ‘If Ken wants to do more, and Michael wants to write more, we’ll certainly do another,’ he says. ‘There’s a lot of material still to go, so we’re not going to run out of inspiration.’

A HAUNTING IN VENICE OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 15 SEPTEMBER.

HOT RIGHT NOW

FRAN DRESCHER IS SENDING OUT A WAKE-UP CALL…

In This Is Spinal Tap, Fran Drescher’s publicist Bobbi Flekman pulled no punches about the sexist sleeve for the Smell the Glove album. ‘Money talks and bullshit walks,’ said Flekman, slamming some sense into rock’s biggest dolts. Now, Drescher has amplified that no-bull note of conviction into a bigger cause: the SAG-AFTRA strikes.

In July, following her attempts to broker a new contract for actors in a business transformed by streaming, digital and AI, the union president’s speech to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers lit up the internet. Having initially felt hopeful about discussions, Drescher later saw her optimism as ‘naive’ when, she argued, the AMPTP stonewalled her union’s requests. Duly, her subsequent speech stirred actors and stoked huge sympathy for its clarity and fire. Memes proliferated: ‘Never, ever, ever cross a picket line,’ she was heard saying across social-media platforms as ‘flashy girl from Flushing’ Fran Fine in 90s sitcom The Nanny.

Her most famous show, The Nanny pitched her free-thinking childcare worker against moneyed, tight-wound employers. Spot a theme? But she grabbed attention elsewhere, too. In Saturday Night Fever, Queens accent sharp, Drescher asked John Travolta straight: ‘Are you as good in bed as you are on that dancefloor?’ Post-Tap, comic and dramatic roles ranged from TV show Happily Divorced to voicework in the Hotel Transylvania films.

She’s not unused to activism, either. A survivor of uterine cancer, she lobbied for Johanna’s Law, aka the Gynecologic Cancer Education and Awareness Act. During the second Bush administration, she advocated globally for women’s health rights. After a call to stand as president for SAG-AFTRA, Drescher won the election over Matthew Modine and remedied what she called ‘dysfunctional division’ in the union.

Drescher drew near-unanimous support for today’s strike action, marking the first time actors and writers have united in a double strike since 1960. Rising to her role, she has put herself on the line repeatedly, comparing Disney CEO Bob Iger to a medieval land baron and resisting the AMPTP’s offer of what she calls ‘incremental changes’ to contracts. ‘What are we doing, moving around furniture on the Titanic?’ she said. ‘The jig is up, AMPTP. We stand tall. You have to wake up and smell the coffee.’

EXCLUSIVE

MEMORIES OF MURDER

THE LONG SHADOW Examining the lasting effect of the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper…

This isn’t a piece about Peter Sutcliffe,’ says Lewis Arnold (Des, Sherwood), the director of all seven episodes of ITV1’s mini-series based around the murders of the Yorkshire Ripper. ‘We’re not interested in him. He’s not what the story is about. It’s about how the selfish, heinous crimes of one man affected a whole community of people, particularly the women and families of those he attacked.’

Spanning from 1975, when Sutcliffe killed first victim Wilma McCann, to 2004, when authorities finally identified who sent the hoax tapes and letters that so tragically diverted the police investigation, The Long Shadow is a vast undertaking. Shot with old anamorphic lenses, it painstakingly recreates the look and feel of a period that bears many socio-economic parallels to our own. Arnold shot for 90 days and sculpted his ambitious drama from 9,332 takes amounting to 239 hours of rushes.

‘When they first came to me, I didn’t think I was going to do it because I’d just done Sherwood, Time and Des, which were all about the darker side of the human condition,’ explains Arnold. ‘But it surprised me how George Kay’s scripts put the victims, the families and the people affected by the case at the forefront of the storytelling. I felt haunted by the institutional prejudices and injustices that had failed the families and the victims.’

Heading up the police’s everescalating manhunt at various points is Toby Jones’ DCS Dennis Hoban, Lee Ingleby’s DCS Jim Hobson and David Morrissey’s DCS George Oldfield, with politics, egos, bureaucratic bungles and toxic sexism hampering the investigation as Sutcliffe killed 13 women over a six-year reign of terror. Intensive research was conducted for the series, with survivors and victims’ families spoken to, wherever possible.

‘We made sure we stuck to what they were telling us, because they’ve never had their truth told’

LEWIS ARNOLD

‘We made sure we stuck to what they were telling us, because they’ve never had their truth told,’ insists Arnold. ‘Marcella Claxton [who survived an attack in 1976] is often described as a prostitute. She’s adamant she was not a prostitute, and that’s the truth we are telling. The police and certain narratives have had the weight of the media, and this is an opportunity for certain people who maybe have not had their truth told, to have their truth told.’

Arnold’s Dennis Nilsen drama Des racked up 10.9m viewers in its first week, and The Long Shadow will surely be a smash, too. So why our obsession with serial killers? ‘We’re fascinated by the dark side,’ says Arnold, ‘and the idea that this could happen to anybody, in terms of being a victim of these men. A lot of it is about the human psyche in those extreme circumstances. And it holds up a mirror not to me or you as an individual, but to society.’

THE LONG SHADOW AIRS ON ITV1 IN SEPTEMBER.