Malice Aforethought

Malice Aforethought is a mystery set in a small village in the english countryside in the 1920s. Contrary to most of these kind of stories, in this one we know who the killer is and the suspense is more about whether he will get away with it.

Dr. Edmund Bickleigh is the village doctor, married to a cold and overbearing wife he seems to have had affairs with most of the village's female population. Currently it is Ivy Ridgeway but when she tells him she is pregnant he breaks it off with her and is ready to move on to the next woman. But the next woman is the newly arrived Madeleine Cranmere and suddenly Bickleigh decides he must get rid of his wife to be with Madeleine. What follows is the good doctor slowly making is wife addicted to morphine and finally killing her with an overdose... Unfortunately Miss Cranmere decided not to wait for him and got engaged to someone else... When Ivy returns from her honeymoon, she and Bickleigh rekindle their affair but her new husband suspects something fishy and starts investigating...

I did like the mystery and especially the setting, I am a big fan of those small town murders that Agatha Christie does so well, but I think this one fails to be truly outstanding. Overall I think it was well cast, my one complaint being how the murderer did not seem has attractive as one would imagine to warrant the attention of all those females, Had he been more attractive and fascinating I think the plot would have worked better. But it was a nice period drama to watch and it made for a pleasant afternoon.

Part of the cast are well known names like Ben Miller (Johnny English), Barbara Flynn (The Forsythe Saga, Cranford), Megan Dodds (Spooks), Lucy Brown (North & South, Primeval) and Richard Armitage (North & South, Robin Hood).

IMDB