Neli kahtusalust is the second episode of the Estonia television mini series Miss Marple'i lood featuring adaptations in the Estonia language of Miss Marple short stories. The series was produced by ETV (Estonian public service TV) and starred Ita Ever in the lead role. Neli kahtusalust is an adaptation of The Four Suspects and was first broadcast on 20 Oct 1990.
Synopsis[]
This episode is a fairly faithful adaptation of the original short story where the "Tuesday night club" discuss an unsolved case uninvolving a closed circle four suspects. As in the original, the theme is that it is more important to prove innocence than to prove guilt.
Comparison with original story[]
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read)
This adaptation is very faithful to the original story. The scriptwriters used the original dialogue where possible.
- The narrative is actually built around a gathering of the Tuesday night club, except there are fewer people. There are only Sir Henry Clithering, Miss Marple, Colonel and Mrs Bantry and Dr Lloyd.
- Much many scenes of the Rosen household are dramatized as flashback. Most of the events are narrated by Sir Henry. This episode is thus heavy on dialogue. There are, however, scenes of the "Black Hand" carrying out terrorist activities.
- Sir Henry shows the gathering the letters and plant catalogues as exhibits.
- The names in the mystery letter are changed. This is because they have to lead to an acrostic of the word "death" in Estonian, which is of course spelled different. In this case it is the word "SURM".
- Dr Helmuth Spath becomes Sigrid Spath
- Edgar Jackson becomes Ursula Jackson
- Amos Perry becomes Ray Perry
- Tsingtau becomes Monaco
- The word for honesty does occur but it this case it is not capitalised and it does not form part of the acrostic in Estonian since here only 4 letters are needed.
- The clue is limited to this acrostic. The secret language of flowers e.g. dahlias meaning treachery is not mentioned. The names in Estonian are said to be flowers. Mrs Bantry reads off their descriptions from a plant catalogue but they are not mentioned as dahlias or any other species. The letter is signed Georgina but again Miss Marple does not explain that it means dahlia in German.
- Village parallels are not mentioned except for Anne Poultny.
- Miss Marple expresses sympathy for Gertrude and likens her to Anne Poultny but here she does not ask Sir Henry to write to her to tell her that she innocence has been established beyond doubt.
Cast[]
- Ita Ever - Miss Marple
- Gunnar Kilgas - Sir Henry Clithering
- Enn Kraam - Colonel Bantry
- Helle Reet Helenurm - Mrs Bantry
- Heino Torga - Dr Lloyd
- Aksel Lemberg - Dr Rosen
- Kaja Zilmer
- Indrek Hermann
- Rein Koster
- Alma Koster
Transcript[]
Subtitles do not exist for this episode. A transcript is provided. To use, copy the text in the link below into a file and give it an .srt file extension.