Macha Semenoff

In Drame en trois actes, the French adaptation of Agatha Christie's Three Act Tragedy for the TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, Macha Semenoff is an actress and director of the Cours Semenoff, an acting school. She is a parallel of the Mrs Charles Mugg, the wife of actor Sir Charles Cartwright from the original novel. Macha is portrayed by Dominique Reymond.

Unlike her parallel who is never seen and is shut away in a mental asylum, Macha plays quite a prominent role in the plot of this adaptation. Formerly a well-known actress who played Lucretia Borgia among other roles, by the time of the events in the show she was past her prime and has taken heavily to drink. She continues to run her acting school through the financial support of her friend Richard Nobel. For one of her classes, she invites a former student and also a well-known actor Herbert Michel as a guest teacher. Unfortunately for Macha, Herbert meets Marlene, (the Egg parallel) at the class and wants to marry her, which is a complication because Herbert had married Macha in 1932 and Macha would not agree to a divorce as she still loved him. Herbert thus puts into action an elaborate plan to kill all those who know the secret. Unlike the original, where Mrs Mugg is not killed, Macha is the last in Herbert's list of victims. He poisons her by forcing her to drink vodka laced with barbiturates. It is made to look like suicide--Herbert dresses her in her Lucretia Borgia costume and there is written on a mirror a confession to the effect that she has killed two people and so it is her turn to die. However, Timothée Glissant, the forensic pathologist finds scratches on her skin suggesting that she had been held down and restrained. Laurence also finds Macha's wedding ring taped under a drawer with Herbert's and her name engraved on it.