# Miss Marple: The Moving Finger (1985)

> When threatening letters start arriving across a quiet English village, the vicar's wife calls on her friend Miss Marple to unmask the writer.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/66210

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 2
- Episode runtime: 60 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: mystery, crime
- Created by: Agatha Christie
- Network: BBC One
- Cast: Joan Hickson, Michael Culver, Sandra Payne, Richard Pearson, Andrew Bicknell, Sabina Franklyn, Dilys Hamlett, Elizabeth Counsell
- TMDB rating: 7.5/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087749/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: mild
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: mild
- Tone: genteel, suspenseful, wry, measured, unsettling

## Synopsis

Miss Marple: The Moving Finger (1985) is a British two-part miniseries adapted from an Agatha Christie novel for BBC One. Joan Hickson stars as the sharp, unassuming amateur sleuth Miss Marple, who is called in by her friend, the vicar's wife, after nasty anonymous letters begin arriving across a quiet English village. Michael Culver, Sandra Payne, and Richard Pearson play some of the residents whose secrets and resentments surface as Marple quietly observes them. The engine of the story is a patient hunt through village gossip, household routines, and small domestic contradictions, rather than forensic spectacle or action. Its two hour-long episodes unfold at a measured, deliberate pace, with the atmosphere shifting from polite tea-table civility to a rising undercurrent of suspicion. Set in a 1980s-produced, period-styled English countryside, it carries a cozy yet unsettling register. Fans of Poirot, Murder, She Wrote, and Midsomer Murders will find the same genteel puzzle-solving pleasure here, with Hickson's measured performance at the center.

## Shows like Miss Marple: The Moving Finger

- [Agatha Christie's Marple (2004)](https://ember.film/tv/5763)
- [Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989)](https://ember.film/tv/750)
- [Campion (1989)](https://ember.film/tv/18308)
- [Magpie Murders (2022)](https://ember.film/tv/108171)
- [Miss Marple: Sleeping Murder (1987)](https://ember.film/tv/66216)
- [Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022)](https://ember.film/tv/119507)
- [Miss Marple: A Pocketful of Rye (1985)](https://ember.film/tv/66212)
- [Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984)](https://ember.film/tv/66208)
- [Murder Before Evensong (2025)](https://ember.film/tv/186850)
- [Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime (1983)](https://ember.film/tv/13774)

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