Magpie Murders

It's a fabulous who done it mystery, characters galore, intrigue. It's got a real darkness to it as well which gives it proper edge. The answer's in the book. I first got involved with the project a good couple of years ago now. Anthony Horowitz and Jill Green, who is the producer, met me to talk about the project to see if I would be interested in playing Susan. And yeah, I sure was. I play a lot of characters in my career who are sort of sometimes quite a long way away from me, chameleon, and I like that, that's what I enjoy. But sometimes I sort of hanker to play something that's a little bit closer to home and Susan feels like that. So I feel like it's taxing another side of my acting branches, if you like. It's kind of refreshing and nice for me. Is this his handwriting? It doesn't sound like him. Susan. Oh, Miss Ryeland. I prefer Susan. Susan is fiercely independent, loves her independence, is in a relationship, but she hates labeling it as a relationship. She's a bit in denial about what it really is. She lives on her own. She hasn't married, she hasn't had children. She loves her career, loves books. She drives a red sports car and she likes her clothes. She's a free spirit. I'm gonna work out who killed him. As Susan begins to investigate the death of Alan Conway, the character of Atticus Pund starts to appear to her. We're doing quite clever things with how you deal with that. 'Cause obviously, you're stepping outside of reality. It's rather lovely, those scenes, they're very tender and they're intriguing because he's got this great detective mind and she's becoming the detective. Perhaps you should read it again. He's giving her all these clues. He's just kind of drip feeding her with these little clues as to what she needs to look for. But I think it should be a kind of a real highlight of the series that you suddenly see them together. The cast is great. We've got a really top of the range cast and I think the carrot for a lot of them, apart from the obvious things like the script and the great writing is that they get to play two people. It's clever. It's clever, clever, but boy, oh boy. The audience are gonna have to be alert. You're gonna have to be tuned in. Don't tell me. You know who did it. It's really on your toes. But I think that's why it's so phenomenally successful. (upbeat music)